Another Stroke of Genius

Fri, 9/12/2008 at 9:50 am | Comment Feed | Trackback | Leave A Comment...

Hello there! If you are new here, you might want to subscribe to the RSS feed for updates straight from Matthew.

iTunes Genius In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s a new iTunes feature called the Genius. Basically it’s nothing more than a recommendation system centered around the iTunes Music Store. Most folks have greeted this with a collective yawn, but as a musician I’m thrilled. Here’s the comment that made it click for me:

Tell [Matthew], btw, that iTunes 8 Genius bar says Justin Timberlake is a great complement to his music.
Chris Penn

At first I was a little repulsed, but then it hit me… My fans are going to see a “Buy Now” link for Justin Timberlake… but how many Justin Timberlake fans are going to see a “Buy Now” link for me?

This could be the start of some serious referral sales for indie musicians if the iTMS handles this the right way. If even 1% of Justin’s 20 billion fans buy one of my tracks, I’ll pay rent this month.

anji bee

what i found interesting is how on just the 2nd day of its release, the genius playlist was already associating other podsafe music with mine. that meant a lot of podcast listeners were probably checking it out. as people use the genius function more data is associated with the various songs and bands they play. so the more fans of our music that use it, the more we'll be represented. if i understand it correctly, anyway... i've actually tried to use songs that came back with an error message that there wasn't enough data associated with it yet, so i think that backs up my assumption. perhaps mr. penn knows more about it? he knows everything!

Kazy

You should check out the new visualizer for iTunes also. I've never seen a visualizer react to every part of a song like this one. It's making me want to use the visualizer again. It's crazy!

Rob Usdin

Actually Matt - it IS more than a recommendation system centered around the music store. Once you let Genius analyze your music library - which takes a while (my analyzation took about 8 hours) - when you click on a song, then click the genius button - it will make a playlist of similar songs a la Pandora, or Last.fm. That's a pretty cool thing. It also does it on a iPhone, iPod Touch, new Nano and soon on older iPod Classics. So on the fly you can create a mix of music around an artist that fits your mood and do it anywhere.

Wonder what will happen if I click Genius with your stuff....hmmm....I'm certainly hoping more pop singer/songwriters in my library come up....

--*Rob