In the past several years my iTunes library has grown to nearly 120 GB. That may not be the most you’ve ever heard of, but anyway, it is a LOT of music. According to the iTunes stats, I would have to sit next to my computer without sleep for nearly 76 straight days in order to listen to all that music at once. 2 1/2 months. Just to illustrate, that’s longer than the gestation period of cats, dogs, minks, wolves, foxes, twice that of a rabbit, and nearly that of a puma. Which is a strange way to illustrate, I realize. My point is I could birth a pack of wolves in the time it would take to listen to all of my music. Not really. Dudes don’t make babies, silly.
iTunes' Genius Button introduced me to my own music.
The problem with having that much music in iTunes is that you eventually have no idea what music is in your library. So eventually you end up listening to whatever starts with an “A” because that’s at the top of the list. Have you ever listened to the Ahmad Jamal album “The Awakening”? I have. It sucks. He actually covers the tune “Touch Me In the Morning”. Gimme a break.
Now, I love the Afro Cuban All-stars and that one album from Alicia Keys, but there’s only so many times I can listen to that stuff before I start to wonder what else I have in my library.
Do I sound like I’m just being lazy? Dude. There are 24,587 songs in my library. How am I supposed to look through all of them? I just want to listen to music, not dewey decimal my George Clinton albums.
And a bigger problem is that much of what I have in my library is music I haven’t listen to yet. I mean to get to it, I just haven’t. And when I dive into the collection to check out something new, what do I pick?
Well, with the Genius Button I now only have to pick 1 song. I pick 1 song, hit the button, and iTunes magically makes a whole playlist of songs – some familiar, some new – that go remarkably well with the song I picked. It is amazing. It is the best thing Apple has ever come up with, including the iPhone, iPod, iPhoto, laptops, and whatever the Apple computer was that allowed me to play Oregon Trail when I was 12. This Genius Button totally changes my life.
For me, it’s like being back in music school, everyone all crowded into a bass player’s dorm room, playing video games and listening to his collection of hard bop albums. NEW MUSIC. It’s like drinking a cool glass of water. It’s refreshing, it’s renewing – and for a musician it can be life-altering.
As a musician, I also think of it as required. As a side man, utility player, I need to keep my ears open to new styles and new artists. And if somebody mentions an album or artist on a gig, I hope to know who they are talking about – especially if it’s in the genre we’re playing.
Would it be going too far to say that the Genius Button makes me a better musician? Not for me. I can’t tell you all the new music I’ve been listening to lately. Who knew I liked Jim Croce?
The Genius Button is part of the iTunes 8 upgrade.
David J. Hahn
David J. Hahn is a Broadway conductor and keyboard player. He co-founded MusicianWages.com with Cameron Mizell in 2008. Visit his new project, Songwriter.fm and sign up for his songwriting newsletter.
Dave! Great post, man! The timing is amazing… I actually *just* got a new laptop (17″ HD screens are amazing… worth every shoulder-breaking pound…) and installed the new iTunes… and i just saw the Genius button for the first time.
Thanks for giving me a reason to get some music loaded on this thing! :)
Dave, first off, “Touch Me In The Morning” was on Ahmad Jamal’s 1980 Motown album “Night Song.” He also plays “When You Wish Upon A Star” to illustrate the depth of the repertoire. “The Awakening” on the other hand was from 1970 and recorded for Impulse. He plays killer cuts of “Stolen Moments,” “Dolphin Dance,” and “Wave.” It’s one of my favorites! Go fix your metadata! Ha.
But to stay on topic, the Genius button is great. And there’s an added bonus for artists who sell their music on iTunes: The results seem to be generated via customer purchase patterns. So if somebody buys one of your tracks on a whim and then forgets they have it, the Genius button could bring it back to their attention. And as it’s playing, if they have the Genius window open, it points them to the rest of your music in the store. Pretty damn sweet.
Cam. I can’t believe you called me on that.
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Genius is definitely a moron. Let’s see, the most famous piece in this whole world is probably Beethoven’s 5th, and it works for that, somewhat. (Can someone tell me how that is related to Shostakovich’s 1st Cello concerto?) The second most famous piece is probably the Ode to Joy of the 9th, and there it already fails.
Aaron – I think you’re probably expecting more nuance than a machine is capable of. I think the Genius button does as good a job as, say, Pandora or Last.fm – except it does it with your own music (which I think is great). I get the best results when I use it to introduce my ears to genres I don’t know very well.
Just want to say first that after discovering this site last night, I’m hooked! I never even knew there were agencies dedicated to cruise ship gigs. You’ve got a wonderful site here and I hope to read more.
That said, I’m not really a big fan of the Genius button. I get better results and recommendations through last.fm (of course last.fm only really works after you’ve been scrobbling a lot of music on it). Genius doesn’t even work for some relatively well known artists (I was shocked when it didn’t even recognize Minus the Bear). I also don’t need Apple collecting any more info on me than they’ve already got. But that’s just me, if it works for you, by all means, go ahead.
Also just want to add that I’ve got over 20000 scrobbles on last.fm, so they’ve got a pretty good idea of what I like. I throw on either “My Mix” or the “My Library” station and I constantly get songs I love, really like, have forgotten about but love, and new stuff that fits me.