Genius really only works well when your music is purchased thru iTunes?

[AppleNewYork]

I dont use iTunes. And when I use Genius on some songs, they say there isn't enough data... or something like that

[ch0k0r]

Yeah i've had this with music I've brought from iTunes though!!!
But really, it does work with music you've got by other means whether its importing from cd's or buying from beat port or something like that.
What kind of tracks are you trying it with?
because it does work just not with little known tracks.

[mkaake]

I dunno - I've got around ~20 gigs of music, only 3 (songs, not gigs) were purchased through the iTMS, and genius works pretty good for me most of the time. I would guess though, that it's more likely to work with songs available on the iTMS.

Anyhew, it's a great feature - when I heard about it, I thought 'meh', but after using it - it's really fantastic. It's nice going to work in the morning (long commute) and rarely ever having to hit 'skip' because I've come across something on my iPod that I'm not really in the mood to listen to...

[adbe]

I dont use iTunes. And when I use Genius on some songs, they say there isn't enough data... or something like that

As far as I know, genius only recognizes songs that are also in the store. It is also very fussy about naming. The search seems to be against an exact match in the store.

Most of my library has extra data in the song name, such as remix artist, and iTunes consistently misses those songs.