Until now I hadn’t been seduced by the promise of Genius.  Genius is a bit of iTunes that, once activated, magically analyses your iTunes Library, then sends that analysis off to Apple who do things with it and send something back to you; in my case a 90 MB file called ‘iTunes Library Genius.itdb’. 

From there you select a track in your Library and tell Genius to do its thing and hey presto a new playlist with multiple tracks chosen to complement your original selection.  Genius also provides a set of Genius Mixes (pic above), mysterious selections again based on your Library, but organised around recurring themes in your collection.

From what I gather the algorithms behind this iTunes feature are very complex and very clever.  I believe that unreservedly because I can’t even begin to imagine how a set of algorithms could do what Genius does to my music collection.  Anyone who knows my taste in music will understand the implications. 

That’s not to say it can’t be stumped.  For instance when I selected ‘The Tomorrow People Theme’, Genius “said no”.  When I selected ‘Because There Is Music In The Air’ by Macho, Genius “said no”.  When I selected ‘Rippin Up The Disco’ by Kylie, Genius “said no”.  And it doesn’t want to do anything with the Beatles tracks (yet).

What’s more impressive is the way it dealt with some of my more obscure stuff.  Even Leonard Nimoy’s albums got the Genius treatment successfully.  It hits more times than it misses and the playlists Genius creates manage to be eerily wonderful.  Just like it promises Genius delivers a fantastic way to navigate your music Library.

My iTunes Library contains 26,213 items and so far Genius appears to be utilising almost everything in it.  If you use iTunes turn it on and play with it.  The iTunes 9 upgrade continues to impress, well apart from the (no-modifiable) white background!