I was intrigued by the new Genius sidebar in iTunes 8, so I gave the upgrade a spin. Bottom line - I like the idea, but the implementation is not yet ready for prime-time.

First, it insisted on rescanning every file in my database, instead of just using the data in the database. For 11,000+ tracks over wifi it took about 3 hours (whereas building the iTunes database took around 30 minutes).

Second:




And third, this isn't exactly an obscure album:



I posted more details in my blog if anyone is interested.

Has anyone else tried it? Does it work for you?

Keep in mind that iTunes seems to have a thing for not liking AC/DC, I had to go download all the album art from Wikipedia for all my AC/DC cds.

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Rob
Droid-ed

One thing I've notices is that iTunes is inconsistent in recognizing/naming certain artists. For example, I believe for some albums it calls the band "AC/DC" whereas for others it calls it "AC-DC." Perhaps the slash versus dash is messing up its search engine. I think I've also noticed the same thing for Matchbox Twenty versus Matchbox 20.

Of course, I'm not sure all this can be blamed on iTunes. I believe iTunes pulls album information from another database (one not maintained by Apple). At least that used to be the case (I'm not sure if it still is).

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-Jay
The Fine Print:Nothing in this post (or any of my other posts) is intended to constitute legal advice or the establishment of an attorney-client relationship. For purposes of this forum, I'm just another nerd like you. :-)

OK, I didn't realize that AC/DC hasn't released their music digitally. Still, Apple should be able to identify the music, shouldn't they?

I'm not saying AC/DC hasn't released its music digitally yet. I'm just saying I think there has been some inconsistency in how the digital tracks are tagged. I agree with you, though, that it should be consistent.

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-Jay
The Fine Print:Nothing in this post (or any of my other posts) is intended to constitute legal advice or the establishment of an attorney-client relationship. For purposes of this forum, I'm just another nerd like you. :-)

Is it just me or does the new "Genius" really seem to be more of a marketing tool designed to sell more iTunes tracks than a tool that provides a better iTunes experience for the user?

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-Jay
The Fine Print:Nothing in this post (or any of my other posts) is intended to constitute legal advice or the establishment of an attorney-client relationship. For purposes of this forum, I'm just another nerd like you. :-)

I wasn't posting clearly - the root cause of the problem is that AC/DC does not offer their tracks digitally, so Apple has no idea they exist. Same with The Beatles, apparently.

Now, I don't agree that the fact that Apple can't sell AC/DC or the Beatles means that Apple can't identify those tracks.

Yes, definitely a marketing tool. I haven't messed around with the Genius playlists too much, though, but I'm going to give that a try this weekend.

I did some simple playlist creation using the Genius. Haven't played a list created by it yet, just looked at what it selected. After watching the Jobs speech and demo deleo I got an understanding that the Genius play lists should improve over time as more people use it. We'll see how that goes.

I think the "Genius" in Genius is that it is a marketing tool when the bar to the right is up recommending songs and albums. Though - it didn't seem that smart as it was recommending songs I already had in my library - thought that was pretty funny.

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It's working for me, there must not be anything wrong!