This Much I Know

iTunes 8 is here, with a new “Genius” feature. Its recommendations aren’t bad – but I’m not sure it qualifies as a Genius just yet. Here’s why.

Let’s start by launching iTunes 8. I have a rather large iTunes library (~15,000 tracks), so I’m used to a bit of a wait when launching a new version of iTunes. Thankfully, the Genius analysis process works in the background. Having run it on my entire library, my first surprise was just how long it took for me to receive my results. All analysis is performed on Apple’s servers, so you have to wait a little while for your library to be processed remotely (though not too long, considering it is analyzing 15,000 tracks). But for a large library, you’ll have to wait a damn sight longer to get those results back. Genius creates a new database file, found here:

~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Library Genius.itdb

…and for my library, it’s 136MB in size. No wonder the “Delivering your Genius results” stage took so long (”delivering” meaning “downloading” in this case).

Worse, whenever I submit any new data to Apple for Genius analyzing, it seems to re-download my entire Genius database again – all 136MB of it. This takes a while, even on a fast internet connection.

One thing that surprised me was the relative speed of the initial “analyzing” stage. My guess is that Genius doesn’t match tracks based purely on their audio signature. For example, if I try and create a Genius playlist for “Nocturnal Transmission” by BT (from his excellent album “Ima”), I get the following message:

Genius is unavailable for the song “Nocturnal Transmission”.
Choosing Update Genius from the Store menu will update your Genius results. If, after updating, iTunes is still unable to identify this track, please choose another song or artist.

…which suggests that the remote Genius analysis couldn’t find a match for this track based on its metadata. (I certainly have enough music of a similar style to find a match based on audio characteristics alone.) The suggestion to simply “choose another song or artist” is weak, too – an opportunity to educate the Genius would be appreciated.

This track has been in my library since my first Genius analysis submission, so “Updating Genius” seems unlikely to make a difference. Nonetheless, I try it, and all that happens is that I have to download another 136MB of database – with still no recommendation forthcoming for Nocturnal Transmission.

So, it looks as though Apple may be basing their recommendations on the metadata assigned to the track, rather than on the audio of the track itself. My metadata is pretty tidy (I’m that kind of guy), but still no suggestions in this case. This is inevitably going to result in a lot of missing matches, as with the iTunes album artwork download option (which marked all of my Oasis singles as being the same one single last time I tried it). This isn’t necessarily Apple’s fault, but it does rather undermine the claim of geniusness. My guess is that over time, as more users submit their data to the Genius service, these gaps in its knowledge will be filled, and a future re-submission of my data may have more luck. But for now, it’s a bit hit and miss, especially for less mainstream tracks.

Two other mild annoyances:

1) Which wag at Apple came up with the “Genius Sidebar” pun? You should be ashamed of yourself.

2) When I ask Genius for recommendations for Elbow’s “Starlings”, one of the recommendations is Elbow’s “Starlings”. It doesn’t take a genius (or, indeed, a Genius) to figure that one out.

When Genius does succeed in making a recommendation, the suggestions are very good. But then again, my music collection is universally brilliant. (As, I am sure, is yours.) I’ll definitely be using Genius to work around an occasional lack of inspiration.