Comments on: iTunes 9 Genius: It’s in the Mix

By: JB51

JB51 — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 22:20:48 +0000

Well Genius was updated a few days ago – but technically there is no John Lennon songs which are unavailable to them now, because they might have been holding a dispute by Apple that his most famous songs ‘Imagine’, ‘Jealous Guy’ (later covered by Roxy Music), ‘(Just Like) Starting Over’, and ‘Woman’ are still unavailable, also The Belle Stars’ earlier hits ‘Sign of the Times’ and ‘The Clapping Song’ are now unavailable, which seems it appeared on Genius over a few months ago now.

Also if i could put the likes of Aled Jones, Charlotte Church, G4, Bryn Tefel, Katherine Jenkins, and Russell Watson on to a ‘Classical Mix’. That would be an appropriate idea, well i put the likes of Hannah Montana, Jonas Brothers, Miley Cyrus, and many others on to a Children’s mix.

By: Idolina in Spain

Idolina in Spain — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 17:15:27 +0000

Even after going to my Music tab for my iPod and selecting my Genius Mixes–it’s still only syncing one of them (out of 4)! Help anyone?

By: James

James — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 03:56:00 +0000

You can still have the genius sidebar if you go to the menu bar and click “view” there is an option that says- Show Genius Sidebar. Alternately, you can use the shortcut: Shift-Command-G

By: Rachel

Rachel — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 12:39:11 +0000

I like the genius mixes but I can’t figure out how to make them into playlists that I can burn to disc for the car. Also I miss the genius sidebar and don’t see how to make that come back. Ping doesn’t work for me very well at all and the old genius sidebar is how I found most new music to buy.

By: Erin

Erin — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 18:01:04 +0000

-new wave mix
-classic hard rock mix
-alt. singer/songwriter mix
-alternative pop/rock mix
-contemporary folk mix
-alt. folk mix
-punk mix
-indie rock mix (:( I despise the very notion of “indie”, but all the stuff in it is excellent like the vaselines, smog, they might be giants etc)
-brit pop and rock mix

awesome :D

By: Mark_B

Mark_B — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 09:45:09 +0000

I have a 8gig Nano 5th gen, I got at least 30gig worth of music in my library but no matter how many times I update Genius it always gives me same results which I thought should be randomly selected based of course under the same/similar genre. for example. I selected a song from an Artist based on ROCK MIX but on my next attempt almost same sets of ROCK songs are created for genius even if I have other rock songs in my 30 gig of music in my library…why its like this? pls help.
thanks in advance.

By: Marci

Marci — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 01:22:26 +0000

I personally find Genius Mixes to be absolutely terrible. Roughly three-quarters of my library is classic rock (AC/DC, Led Zepplin, ect.), alternative rock (Breaking Benjamin, Green Day) or metal (Within Temptation, Drowning Pool). So, it stands to reason that I would have many rock or metal playlists, correct?

Well, with over 1000 songs, my 9 mixes are as follows:

Punk Pop Mix
Teen Pop Mix
Teen Pop Mix 2
Pop Mix
Urban Crossover Mix
Classic Pop Punk Mix
Children’s Mix (Really? What?)
Alt. Metal Mix
Classic Rock Mix

None of the mixes make sense. The pop mixes are all repetitive mixes of the ~100 pop songs that I have in my library, and in the other mixes, there is a confused jumble of unrelated songs. (Since when is The Bloodhound Gang a Metal band?) I have carefully tagged the genres of every song in my library, so this distribution is extremely confusing to me.

Also, some technical glitch seems to have replaced the cover art of some of my albums with the graphics of my mixes… Has anyone else experienced this?

Suffice to say that I am sorely disappointed with Genius Mixes. I can only hope that an editing feature is added in the near future for all of our sakes.

By: Maxine

Maxine — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 18:48:12 +0000

umm, with my Genius, i can only get one mix, which is UrbanCrossOver, and although most of my music is Urban, (because im a teenager) i still have other Genres of music.. why wont it make new mixes? even tho i updated Genius?

By: Karen

Karen — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 18:23:27 +0000

Thanks for your reply Kristian. I did solve the problem. It seemed obvious once I had done it, but there was no direction anywhere about this. All of the songs have to be checked off in order for Genius to work properly. I am sure that there must be someone else out there who had this happen to them!

By: Kristian Hansen

Kristian Hansen — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 18:12:05 +0000

I realize this is an older post, so you may have figured the following out by now. You can actually view the songs that are going to play next by clicking on the Genius icon to the right of the title. Here’s a screenshot: http://classyllama.com/wp-content/uploads/skitch/ClipMenu-20100625-130705.jpg
Now, I have over 65,000 songs in my library. I can’t see this being a reason I would be able to do the above, and not those with smaller libraries!
Also, in case any of you don’t know, you can right click on a song, and click “Start Genius”. This will automatically take you to a Genius page. Basically, this allows you to do the same thing that you would do with Pandora (except it allows you to view all the songs at once… but Pandora most likely has a larger selection of music than all of us put together…!).

By: Karen

Karen — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 14:35:25 +0000

I cannot create Genius Playlists or Genius Mixes to work on my computer. They work perfectly on my iPhone.
I have turned off then on and Updated, still nothing.
Is there anyone out there who has any ideas?

By: NightFlight

NightFlight — Fri, 28 May 2010 14:39:46 +0000

I agree that the more music you have (30,000 @ 320GB) the better genius works; however, it tends to produce the same playlists. I am currently trying to find a way to do a REAL refresh of the list. I am hoping that iTunes 9.1.1 will do the trick.

By: Valerie

Valerie — Fri, 21 May 2010 05:44:04 +0000

I have just one Genius Mix, a Pop Mix, for my library of 132 songs. You would probably need a larger library to get more mixes. Because iTunes manages the Genius Mixes, there's no way to create or edit them. For me even my one Genius Mix has been useful since I have some meditative music on my iPod that I wouldn't want to listen to while driving. I can turn on my Pop Mix and be confident that the meditative music won't come up.

By: Valerie

Valerie — Fri, 21 May 2010 05:15:13 +0000

Genius Mix worked for me with my library of 120 songs, but it gave me just one pop mix.

By: Joseph

Joseph — Sun, 09 May 2010 19:20:38 +0000

I am sold. My beef with the original Genius mixes was that the choices would hover too close to the five or six "people also purchased" artists that you would find linked to an album in the itunes store. These new Genius mixes are extremely on-point. I should add, however, that I have a very large collection, I have a lot of music that's come onto the scene since the inception of the iTunes store, and I have a lot of releases that stick in and around certain genres.

I think there are different kinds of music listeners that hear different reasons for bands to be "similar." For me similarity comes from bands having similar sonic elements, similar influences, similar philosophies, and similar cities or origin (i.e. the Chicago 'Thrill Jockey Records' sound––lots of divergence in styles and genres, but similar aesthetics due to the weather and feel of Chicago). I feel like these are the types of delineations that Genius playlists never had the knack for but Genius Mixes excel at.

iTunes gave me Electronica, Indie Rock, Art & Experimental Rock, Punk, Post-Modern Rock, Hip Hop / Rap, Alternative Pop/Rock, Progressive House, Metal, Brit-Pop/Rock, Alt. Singer/Songwriter and Americana.

They are all pretty diverse. In the progressive house mix, for instance, the usual suspects like Daft Punk, Deadmau5 Vitalic, John Tejada and Audion were there, but iTunes threw some Squarepusher and DJ Assault in the mix as well. Which is interesting because those artists aren't necessarily 'progressive house,' but share some similar aesthetic elements.

Life is good.

By: Jake

Jake — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 03:32:49 +0000

I have around 170 songs in my iTunes, yet I only have one Genius Mix, my Punk Mix. Is this normal, and is this or something similar happening to anyone else, b/c I can't find out how to find/make different mixes.