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iPod Is "Genius" working for you?
- Thread starter djwobble
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macsForLife
macrumors member
Same here. I have a huge list of music I still want to get, I have ~3500 right now. Idk, I just love music. 🙂
yeah, Genius sucks for me too.... see my thread (https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/559561/). Pretty much determined that if what you listen to is popular in the US (aka can be found at Walmart), it works with Genius, otherwise Genius is a hack. Which is really pretty stupid considering that it works with a few songs I have whose meta-tags are screwed, which suggests it's more reliant on the actual acoustic properties of the song rather than the meta-tags themselves.
Man - how can you only have 213 songs in iTunes? Did you just buy your computer and are still ripping CDs, or do you just not have much music?
I think 5000 songs is totally average, and I have heard of people with over 20,000 (I currently have around 10,000).
Hmmm - a thought occurs - how old are you? A recent survey here surprised me when it showed the majority (?) of MacRumors members were under 20 years old - I guess it's hard to accumulate 10,000 songs if you are on an allowance from your parents? Old timers like me have the benefit of years of collecting CDs behind us!
Edit: whoops forgot to mention Genius - working great for me, but the tunes I pick do not seem to HAVE to be in iTunes for it to work - e.g. it makes great playlists when I choose a Zappa track (Frank Zappa is not available in iTunes apart from some "bootleg" recordings), but refuses when I choose an obscure blues or folk music track.
sammich
macrumors 601
A while ago in High School I had become obsessed with ripping CD's. Anything lying around the house, in siblings collections (my friends too) and I had amassed about 7000 songs, of which about 1/3 i will probably never listen to. My collection barely grows now, the odd single off iTS maybe, and now I cleared out a massive chunk of that 7000 songs, and got it down past 5000.
Genius works great for me. Great money spinner on Apple's part (gotta consider how much new hardware they installed to take care of all that library genius song matching/suggestion from 'millions' of users). All my music is immaculately tagged and organised. And proud of it.😀
All I need to do now is wait for 2.1 on my 3G to use the genius feature.
VenusianSky
macrumors 65816
The Genius feature is working for me. I have 7000+ songs. However, iTunes is crashing randomly. I am running Vista x64. Itunes 7.7 never did this. It is more stable when I close the Genius sidebar. Sometimes when I enter the store, all the images will display as broken links and then iTunes will freeze up. When I open it back up, it will be fine. Aside from this, I like the Genius feature. I'm sure Apple will work out the bugs. If it gets too bad, I will go back to 7.7 until things are fixed.
works good for me too. 17,000 tracks and it somehow picks out 20 or so tracks for a playlist? it must make a playlist according to how much will fit on a music CD. it's pretty freakin' cool.
i was kind of amazed at what it put together- from old punk to new alternative country to classic rock. i just kept clicking artist to see who would be associated with them.
i was kind of amazed at what it put together- from old punk to new alternative country to classic rock. i just kept clicking artist to see who would be associated with them.
otep1760
macrumors regular
there are a few bands that if i use them for the 'seed song' it wont make a playlist from
considering the bands are slightly 'obscure' but i have a lot of bands like that in my library and it wont even compare it to their own songs.
so far the bands that ive noticed this problem with are: Burzum, Sunn O)), Aura Noir and Agalloch
EDIT: Agalloch actually works.
and other than those bands, it works quite well.
considering the bands are slightly 'obscure' but i have a lot of bands like that in my library and it wont even compare it to their own songs.
so far the bands that ive noticed this problem with are: Burzum, Sunn O)), Aura Noir and Agalloch
EDIT: Agalloch actually works.
and other than those bands, it works quite well.
I'm loving the whole Genius thing so far. It really is helping me to find songs that got lost in the mix of things. I like it because it helps me to get a random selection of songs in a certain genre- shuffle for me is just too random. This helps me find similar things I've never heard before.
My library is 2003 songs/336 albums. If you're someone who only has 200 some songs, go discover used CD stores. That's how I built my library. You can get entire albums for the price of 1 song on iTunes. For $20, you could potentially get 10 decent albums, which will add 100 songs to your library roughly. That being said, I have a bad habit of buying stuff and then not listening to it for a couple months. It takes a while for an album to grow on me. I'm weird because I like owning the entire album in most cases. I also hate buying albums on iTunes; I only use the iTunes store for single purchases. I love owning the physical CD. I'm kind of nervous because I'm running out of room on my iPhone and I hate carrying two separate devices, but I also hate not having all my music with me.
My library is 2003 songs/336 albums. If you're someone who only has 200 some songs, go discover used CD stores. That's how I built my library. You can get entire albums for the price of 1 song on iTunes. For $20, you could potentially get 10 decent albums, which will add 100 songs to your library roughly. That being said, I have a bad habit of buying stuff and then not listening to it for a couple months. It takes a while for an album to grow on me. I'm weird because I like owning the entire album in most cases. I also hate buying albums on iTunes; I only use the iTunes store for single purchases. I love owning the physical CD. I'm kind of nervous because I'm running out of room on my iPhone and I hate carrying two separate devices, but I also hate not having all my music with me.
I'm really happy with my first 10 song Genius Playlist. It's based on an Aimee Mann song and includes Teddy Thompson, Matthew Sweet, Crowded House, Neil Finn and the Gobetweens.
Great bunch of songs.
Great bunch of songs.
mrgreen4242
macrumors 601
I have 3100 and that's just song. I have about 5x as many audiobooks (by time - 12.5 days worth of music and like 65 days of books). And I've had some rotten luck with HDD's over the alst few years. I was at 6 or 7k before.
Anyways, I've only used the Genius feature once, but it's pretty slick. I picked a fairly obscure song (Tin Foil Hats by Rocky Votolato) and got a playlist of similar, but not identical sounding, tracks from a variety of artists (Sufjan Stevens, Frou Frou, Elliot Smith, Neutral Milk Hotel, Ryan Adams, Bright Eyes, etc). Some are on my frequently played lists, but most weren't. Good way to get to some of the "B tracks" on CDs that I don't listen to often.
Anyways, this is a feature that I've been pining for a long time. I can't wait to try it on my touch at work. I often create on the go playlists based on my mood at a given time, but after the 10-15 minutes of making a 2 hour list and then another 30-40 minutes into and my mood changes. 😛
Now I can pick a song that reflects my mood and just insta-playlist... mood changes, pick a song for the new mood and instantly start a new group of tracks... love it love it love it.
Hm. Makes me want a 32gb touch to hold all my music. 😛 EVIL APPLE!!!
EDIT: Should start a thread to list the "source song" and the Genius list based on it.
Galley
macrumors 65816
I've been stuck on Step 2 for several hours now. I've tried it many times, always with the same results. It says that is "taking longer than usual". 😕
Ntombi
macrumors 68040
dukebound85
macrumors Core
this may be uber noobish but is genius free? i saw it uses your itunes account login and i hesitated
majordude
macrumors 68020
Are you serious? It looks like just another way for Apple to sell you distorted songs for $0.99!
Diatribe
macrumors 601
Well, I finally upgraded, despite some annoyances that I have with parts of the new terms & conditions.
I must say it works surprisingly well. Not Pandora-like well but well enough for the occasional use. Won't replace making some quality playlists myself but oh well.
Now does anyone know how I get it to not include 1 and 2 star songs? It's driving me nuts that it includes bad songs in there.
I must say it works surprisingly well. Not Pandora-like well but well enough for the occasional use. Won't replace making some quality playlists myself but oh well.
Now does anyone know how I get it to not include 1 and 2 star songs? It's driving me nuts that it includes bad songs in there.
Agathon
macrumors 6502a
I like it.
It has worked well for me so far.
It seems to work very well for well-known music. A track by the Police pulled up a nice selection of 80s music along with some other tracks of similar atmosphere.
But I tried it with a track from Ry Cooder's soundtrack to Paris, Texas, which is solo acoustic slide guitar blues (i.e. a bit out of the ordinary). It did a really good job of suggesting other tracks and I have to admit that I was pretty happy with what it did.
I can see it being a waste of time for Classical though.
It has worked well for me so far.
It seems to work very well for well-known music. A track by the Police pulled up a nice selection of 80s music along with some other tracks of similar atmosphere.
But I tried it with a track from Ry Cooder's soundtrack to Paris, Texas, which is solo acoustic slide guitar blues (i.e. a bit out of the ordinary). It did a really good job of suggesting other tracks and I have to admit that I was pretty happy with what it did.
I can see it being a waste of time for Classical though.
TuffLuffJimmy
macrumors G3
It's just from 7 years of using iTunes.
Yeah, because Apple is making so much money from music purchases on iTMS... 🙄 I think it's pretty helpful. I'm always looking for new song recommendations. Maybe this will replace my addiction to Pandora.
Ntombi
macrumors 68040
Yep, free. 🙂
As for classical, yeah, don't bother. 🙄 That's no surprise, with the woeful way iTunes treats classical to begin with, but for the other genres I've tried, it's great.
Edit: Okay, I take that back. It doesn't work for Musicals either. 🙁 Classical and Musicals not working takes away a good third of my library.
Same here. I got 7000 songs. I REALLY want to try this out.
Its been 4 hours on step two. Is this unusual?😕
i've been on step one for 45 minutes and it's only halfway done, but i do have 17,600 songs. i just wanted to check it out real quick and install spore, which i was only going to "check out real quick" tonight.
looks like it's going to be an all nighter.
looks like it's going to be an all nighter.
hmm Genius worked immediately for me, the researching my library part didnt take too long, maybe 5-10 minutes with 6,500 songs.
seems pretty cool, looking forward to playing with it more
seems pretty cool, looking forward to playing with it more