Daisy: Please oh please oh PLEASE don't let me see a cigarette!
Baba: Okay, I will try.
Daisy: I wasn't talking to you Baba. I was talking to THE WORLD.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Monday, December 6, 2010
Three Failures of iTunes "Genius"
Don't get me wrong - when Apple introduced the Genius feature to iTunes, I flipped backwards in excitement. I love making playlists, but I am also lazy, and since with so many (read: 1) hip friends who have made it their (his) life's mission to accumulate ALL THE MUSIC IN THE WORLD, I have a pretty vast library full of music that I haven't listened to and don't even know the best place to start. What's the best Devo song after "Whip It"? Couldn't tell you. Pandora is great for the whole, "if you love this, you'll probably enjoy this" route, but I am one of the five remaining 18-35 year-olds who doesn't have an iPhone and I do nearly all my music listening on the go.
So while I have embraced Genius with open arms, it has made a few head-scratchingly baffling fails, some of which I will share with you.
1. Rickie Lee Jones/Tom Waits/Chuck E. Weiss
I love me my Tom Waits so very, very much. I love every period of his career, and love him so much that I have sought out his influences, his influencees, and his contemporaries, including his Tropicana Hotel roommates, Rickie Lee Jones and Chuck E. Weiss. Now, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that absolutely everyone who has purchased a Chuck E. Weiss album in the last ten years has done so because of the Waits connection. But when I Genius (it's a verb now) any Weiss song (say, "Anthem for Old Souls" for instance), I am compiled a list of Dixieland jazz and roots blues and a palpable absence of Waits. Perhaps even more surprising, the catalog of Rickie Lee Jones, Tomcat's former flame and pre-Brennan muse, comes up loaded with Joni Mitchell, Edie Brickell and every other proto-Lilith Faire songstress, but no Waits, no Weiss, no nothing. Not even the song "Chuck E's in Love" which is ABOUT CHUCK E. WEISS.
2. any big hit.
This came to light today when I thought I could make an easy Christmas mix for my daughter by Geniusing Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas" (Shut up, hipsters. I will slap you upside the nuts with your own mustache.) To it's credit, the second song was Lennon's "Happy Xmas" and the third Chuck Berry's "Run Rudolph Run." But track four? "Mmm Bop" by Hanson. Five? "Circle of Life," Elton John. I can understand that Genius has a variety of different criteria that it weighs when compiling playlists, but I would think that were it to live up to its name, it might understand that there are times when some criteria should be weighted more than others. Specifically: in the case of holiday music, the first thing it looks for should be things of a similar genre; less so the units sold or the Billboard chart position.
(Netflix is in the same boat, actually. Earlier today I added "A Charlie Brown Christmas" to Daisy's queue. Did the red envelope suggest I might enjoy "The Polar Express" or "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer"? That's silly. Clearly by adding a Christmas movie to my queue in December, what I really want are films like "It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown", "It's the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown" and "Bandslam." You're probably right, Netflix. You know best.)
3. The Beatles
An announcement that will change my life forever?!? Really iTunes? Are you going to give away your songs for free? Are you going to allow me to telepathically select which songs I download just by what I hum as I walk down the street? No? You just ... oh, you got the Beatles. Well that's nice. I mean, I already have a lot ... most ... absolutely all of their albums, singles compilations, Cirque du Soleil show soundtracks .. but hey! at least now they'll show up in my Genius playlists, right? I mean, just the other day I Geniused Pixies cover of "Wild Honey Pie" and thought "How great would it be to have some White Album tracks show up? But they didn't. And then I did one for Elton John's "Burn Down the Mission" (I'M ALLOWED) and thought "Well surely the progenitors of British pop will appear on this one," but yet again, not so much. "Satisfaction," "Good Vibrations," "LAST TRAIN TO CLARKSVILLE" - not one of these managed to score a single Beatles track in its playlist. I don't know if this was some obscure contractual agreement George Martin, Yoko, and Steve Jobs agreed on, but I will say this: LAME.
But hey, I don't make the algorithms. I just mock 'em. Thanks again, O Genius of the all-knowing Eye-Tunes - what you do do, you do be do be do so well.
Tweet
So while I have embraced Genius with open arms, it has made a few head-scratchingly baffling fails, some of which I will share with you.
1. Rickie Lee Jones/Tom Waits/Chuck E. Weiss
I love me my Tom Waits so very, very much. I love every period of his career, and love him so much that I have sought out his influences, his influencees, and his contemporaries, including his Tropicana Hotel roommates, Rickie Lee Jones and Chuck E. Weiss. Now, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that absolutely everyone who has purchased a Chuck E. Weiss album in the last ten years has done so because of the Waits connection. But when I Genius (it's a verb now) any Weiss song (say, "Anthem for Old Souls" for instance), I am compiled a list of Dixieland jazz and roots blues and a palpable absence of Waits. Perhaps even more surprising, the catalog of Rickie Lee Jones, Tomcat's former flame and pre-Brennan muse, comes up loaded with Joni Mitchell, Edie Brickell and every other proto-Lilith Faire songstress, but no Waits, no Weiss, no nothing. Not even the song "Chuck E's in Love" which is ABOUT CHUCK E. WEISS.
2. any big hit.
This came to light today when I thought I could make an easy Christmas mix for my daughter by Geniusing Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas" (Shut up, hipsters. I will slap you upside the nuts with your own mustache.) To it's credit, the second song was Lennon's "Happy Xmas" and the third Chuck Berry's "Run Rudolph Run." But track four? "Mmm Bop" by Hanson. Five? "Circle of Life," Elton John. I can understand that Genius has a variety of different criteria that it weighs when compiling playlists, but I would think that were it to live up to its name, it might understand that there are times when some criteria should be weighted more than others. Specifically: in the case of holiday music, the first thing it looks for should be things of a similar genre; less so the units sold or the Billboard chart position.
(Netflix is in the same boat, actually. Earlier today I added "A Charlie Brown Christmas" to Daisy's queue. Did the red envelope suggest I might enjoy "The Polar Express" or "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer"? That's silly. Clearly by adding a Christmas movie to my queue in December, what I really want are films like "It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown", "It's the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown" and "Bandslam." You're probably right, Netflix. You know best.)
3. The Beatles
An announcement that will change my life forever?!? Really iTunes? Are you going to give away your songs for free? Are you going to allow me to telepathically select which songs I download just by what I hum as I walk down the street? No? You just ... oh, you got the Beatles. Well that's nice. I mean, I already have a lot ... most ... absolutely all of their albums, singles compilations, Cirque du Soleil show soundtracks .. but hey! at least now they'll show up in my Genius playlists, right? I mean, just the other day I Geniused Pixies cover of "Wild Honey Pie" and thought "How great would it be to have some White Album tracks show up? But they didn't. And then I did one for Elton John's "Burn Down the Mission" (I'M ALLOWED) and thought "Well surely the progenitors of British pop will appear on this one," but yet again, not so much. "Satisfaction," "Good Vibrations," "LAST TRAIN TO CLARKSVILLE" - not one of these managed to score a single Beatles track in its playlist. I don't know if this was some obscure contractual agreement George Martin, Yoko, and Steve Jobs agreed on, but I will say this: LAME.
But hey, I don't make the algorithms. I just mock 'em. Thanks again, O Genius of the all-knowing Eye-Tunes - what you do do, you do be do be do so well.
Tweet
NSFScience!
Before the cement dried on one portion of the sidewalk outside the U of C lab school, someone wrote "FUCK LAB." Though I'm certain this was intended as a juvenile invective against the school, I always imagine it to be the name of the place where the best kind of science gets done.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)