i blogged about the itunes "genius" feature a week or 2 ago, it gave less than stellar results. i couldn't until today get it to work at home, i got errors basically implying their servers were on fire.
it took like 15 minutes for apple to siphon off my library information. i wonder what they plan on doing with all that data? i didn't read the EULA because i like my eyes just the way they are. not that i'm worried about people knowing what music i listen to, i already have a last.fm account, but i'm starting to trust apple less and less these days. demographics? charts? pirate location? possibilities are endless, and that info across all itunes users being aggregated is definitely worth coin to someone.
anyhow, back to the experiment. i gave it a beach boys tune. it gave me a bunch of oldies, some totally non-oldies. a bunch of non surf type stuff.... avril lavigne? frankie goes to hollywood? evanescence? at least no metal this time. i'm guessing they aren't cross referencing stuff they don't have in the itunes store, as there's alot of stuff that should have hit for the beach boys, even by simply using the "surf" genre. i have some surf by some bands not on major labels that it totally overlooked.
maybe i'm missing the point? maybe it's not to find similar music, rather "if you like X, you might like Y"??
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