Genius Playlists
I’ve been a subscriber to the excellent last.fm service for a long time now; I love it when clever technology is put to a cool purpose. Not only can you track your listening habits (which can be pretty interesting in itself, worthy of its own blog post which will follow), but with some analysis the clever guys at Last.HQ can recommend music that you will probably like. I use the stand alone app at work, too, to listen to music, giving me access to stream my music ‘from home’ as well as other interesting new tunes.
Around the same time as I got my iPhone 3G (and hence started using iTunes (never fear, I will not forget you, Frankel)) iTunes 8 was released. Apple were making a song and dance out of Genius, a function which would generate you playlists based on a starting file, as well as recommending music which you might like to buy from the iTunes Music Store (oh, how convenient - thank you Mr Jobs ;)).
To me this sounded familiar, and after having a quick gander at it to establish what it looked like, I dismissed it. Perhaps it was my choice of track, but the results it returned weren’t great.
Fast forward two months. For a laugh last night, whilst scrolling through my music, I noticed the cheese-tastic classic Loveshack by the B52s. A quick right-click, Start Genius later and I had 25 tracks which are worthy of the status of ‘Le Grand Fromage’.
Immediately after indulging in what, on reflection, could perhaps be viewed as a quite dubious selection of tracks (and scrobbled publicly - thanks last.fm!), I could see only one way to repent. With all the hype surrounding the release of the new Guns n’ Roses album, I thought I would see what that turned up. Paradise city, in the most part. Which I’ve been slowly working my way through this evening.
All in all Genius seems to have got a lot more ‘intelligent’ these last couple of months.
This little jaunt into the depths of my music collection has brought two things to my attention though:
- I have amazed a lot of quite random tracks over the years
- I don’t listen to nearly enough of it… until now?
For your enjoyment, here are the two playlists Genius created for me:
- B52S - Love Shack
- REM - Shiny Happy People
- No Doubt - Just A Girl
- Abba - Take A Chance On Me
- The Mighty Mighty Bosstones - The Impression That I Get
- Hanson - Mmmbop
- The Police - Walking On The Moon
- Incubus - Drive
- Eagles - Life In The Fast Lane
- Sheryl Crow - Soak Up The Sun
- The Calling - Wherever You Will Go
- Barenaked Ladies - It’s All Been Done
- Go Gos - Vacation
- Peter Gabriel - Sledgehammer
- styx - renegade
- The Strokes - Last Nite
- Meat Loaf - Paradise by the Dashboard Light
- Meatloaf - Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad
- U2 - Pride (In the Name of Love)
- Presidents of the United States of America - Peaches
- Foo Fighters - Big Me
- Wham! - Wake Me up Before You Go-Go
- Filter - Take A Picture
- Go Gos - Our Lips Are Sealed
- Iggy Pop - Lust for Life
iTunes generated playlist to try and ‘redeem’ myself:
- Guns N Roses - Welcome To The Jungle
- Motorhead - Ace of Spades
- Nirvana - Rape Me
- Filter - Hey Man, Nice Shot
- Pink Floyd - Run Like Hell
- Green Day - Long View
- Foo Fighters - Big Me
- Foreigner - Hot Blooded
- Audioslave - Like A Stone
- System of a Down - Toxicity
- Jet - Cold Hard Bitch
- Led Zeppelin - Rock and Roll
- Guns N Roses - Patience
- Foo Fighters - DOA
- Green Day - Welcome to Paradise
- The Offspring - The Kids Aren’t Alright
- Red Hot Chili Peppers - By The Way
- Nirvana - In Bloom
- U2 - Desire
- Filter - Take A Picture
- Eric Clapton - Lay Down Sally
- Presidents of the United States of America - Peaches
- Led Zeppelin - Good Times Bad Times
- Weezer - Hash Pipe
- Quiet Riot - Cum On Feel The Noize
