Ok, iTunes, of which I am a huge fan, has recently added this feature called Genius. Genius is a friendly little tool that will make recommendations based on what you purchase. So if say you've purchased Annie Lennox's Walking on Broken Glass the Genius sidebar will recommend things like Talking Heads or Fine Young Cannibals. It will also let you preview you songs right from the sidebar so you don't have to wander over to the iTunes store.
But my very favorite part of Genius is that it will create playlists from the music you already have in your library. I know there are folks out there that probably want to create their own playlists and that's cool but for me? This feature is so very awesome! You pull one song up from your library of music and hit the Genius button and little old iTunes builds an awesome playlist for you! And the playlists are indeed awesome. Genius creates playlists that are cohesive in not just genre or style but mood as well, which is my favorite way to create playlists. The Mexican would only build playlists that consisted of music from the same genre. But to me, it makes complete sense to have Mariah Carey's Always Be My Baby right next to Fleetwood Mac's Little Lies. Polar opposite styles but similar messages and feels. I like it! Not only that, but it utilizes songs I've forgotten I owned! Several times during my current Genius playlist have I thought "I'd forgotten about this song! Man, it's awesome!"
Now Shot, I know you're an advocate of file sharing and that iTunes goes against this principle but I do love me some iTunes. It's so neat and tidy and clean and easy. And I'm perfectly happy paying 99 cents for a song that I love.
I know that certain recording artists out there have a beef with being able to buy singles and not having to but the whole album and to them I say this: I have purchased exactly 3 full albums from iTunes. And I bought them because all 3 albums were, in my opinion, solid from start to finish. Every track was good, every song spoke to me on some level. So yes, for that, I will pay 10, 12, 14 dollars. But I refuse, I refuse to purchase $15 worth of your mindless warbling because you believe that your album is a "story" and I can't comprehend it by only listening to one "chapter". Come on now. That's just silly.
Ok, that's all I got for right now.
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5 comments:
The Genius button sounds neat. Like on Seeqpod.com when you hit the "discovery" button. My favorite playlist has to be Johnny Cash box set vs. The Misfits box set. They go together like gay rights and common sense.
I'm totally not a conspiracy theorist, but I'm hesitant to activate that function because iTunes will certifiably have unlimited access to my library to poke around with even more software.
I'm already pissed I have to burn any iTunes music to an audio cd, then upload that back into iTunes in order to have music that I can freely burn data discs for the few people with whom I share infinitesimal amounts of music or not have the "number of times" I burn a song tracked and stopped at seven (is it still seven?).
Music socialism isn't the worst thing in the world, but sometimes it's uber inconvenient.
H-
You're going about that the opposite wrong way. There are programs out there that will take the permission rights data out of the mp3 stream, without actually burning them. Then they'll be free for mass consumption.
Thanks for the tip- not so technologically savvy here...
It's called DRM removal. Do a search for it. Or ask jeeves about it. He knows.
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