I've just been giving Genius a try. I listen to alot of electronic and dance music, which isn't one of the most popular genres in the US, so I decided to give it a try with Genius. The first song I tried was "Ride On Time" by Black Box, a fairly common house track. The playlist included quite a bit of trance and hands up, which both happen to be genres I have quite a few songs in, in comparison to house. A few house tracks were in the playlist, but less that I would expect. I tried a few slightly more obscure songs, one hands up and one electro, both of which I couldn't create a Genius playlist for. Next, I tried a happy hardcore track, which surprisingly created a very accurate genius playlist. A bit of other hhc tracks, but also some of my more melodic drum 'n' bass tracks and some more intense dance, techno and trance. There were a few misfits, but overall that one was mighty impressive.
I tried some tracks in some more popular genres, interestingly "Wouldn't Get Far" by Kanye West couldn't generate a playlist. I thought that was a fairly popular track. Generally, the more popular R&B/Hip Hop/Rap, Rock, and Pop tracks geniused quite well. However, it appears that genius takes a song's artist into account with alot of weight, because the playlist I generated off of Chris Brown's "With You" included the Freemason remix of "Green Light", probably because it is by Beyonce, even though the genre is listed as house, a stretch from "With You".
I would imagine that over the next few weeks, however, Genius's accuracy should improve quite a bit because of all the extra information it gets from new users. Looks to have quite a bit of potential. As well as just being able to quickly generate a playlist of songs to listen to, I imagine that it could be very useful for parties. I often end up "DJing" friend's parties (I DJ as a side job) off an iPod/my cd player and sometimes get stuck as to what to play next. Being able to just create a playlist based on the current song would be a great way to quickly get a list of similar songs to pick from.
One question: Could someone explain to me why iTunes restarts the song you create a genius playlist off of if the song is still in the first few seconds? I would think that it would be better to always continue to play the song and just jump to the playlist.
Wolfgang