First, when you see the playlist, you’ll almost certainly not agree with the headline. As a colleague remarked today, it’s a bold person who shares the contents of their iPod with anyone. Especially when the iPod owner in question is regularly mocked for his love of cheesy 80s pop. But, Hell, I’m going to stick it on the blog anyway. We’re all adults here.
Second, let me also preface this by saying: I know my iPod doesn’t have a personality. The most read post on this site remains my four-year-old rant over a New York Times piece which claimed the iPod’s shuffle feature gave the iPod the ability to anticipate emotional needs. (Favourite bit of that NYT piece: for balance, it also quoted some folk who didn’t like the feature because it was failing to anticipate those needs. Sigh.)
So if, at any point, you think I’m veering towards this kind of nonsense, I’d like you to all call a halt in comments. Or, in fact, just assail me with a cricket bat until I return to my senses.*
That said…
I think the new Genius playlist generator in the iPod is really damned fine, and perhaps comes closer (without actually getting there) to anticipating – say – your emotional needs from music at a given point. I’m wondering just how clever that feature actually is.
For the uninitiated, Genius actually refers to two different features; on the iPod, Genius builds a playlist of songs, drawn from all the songs on your iPod, based on one track you pick (Genius in iTunes, on a computer, also pulls in “related” tracks you might want to buy from the iTunes music store. It’s not very good).
Now, Lest you start reaching for the willow, can I say it’s obvious that Genius on the iPod is only anticipating what you want based on what you’ve already told it, just as a good illusionist cons you. Because of that, I may be ascribing far more intelligence to it than is actually built in – Genius is self-reinforcing because it’s already working only with your music library, and a track you’ve picked as the basis for the playlist.
So, if you pick as your first (or “seed”) track Girls Aloud’s Swinging London Town, I suspect the music Genius will derive from that pick will be substantially different – cheesy Girlband pop, to be specific – to the choice it would have made had you opted for… say, anything by Tom Waits.
But damn, however it works, it’s great at looking good.
This morning, taking as inspiration the slightly dodgy seed of Simple Minds’ Promised You A Miracle, it took me on something of an 80s tour de force (“or de farce”, I hear you cry?) which moved on from the seed to a little ABC (they’re pictured above – it was Poison Arrow – the US Jazz mix, natch), Spandau Ballet (To Cut a Long Story Short) and Kajagoogoo (Too Shy) for a spanking opening, before quietening things down with a much-needed and entirely appropriate downbeat section, featuring Bryan Ferry (Don’t Stop the Dance), Prefab Sprout (When Love Breaks Down) and The Style Council (12″ mix of Long Hot Summer). Then it picked up once more – Visage (Fade to Grey 12″) and some more ABC (Look of Love). Then I was at work.
So: it clearly understood my need for some 80s cheesy, synth-heavy music, with (mostly) male vocals (later in the playlist there was some Yaz, God help us, and Grace Jones). But I was taken with the less obvious slow section in the middle; had a friend pieced together this playlist manually, I’d have been impressed.
But the choice. Deliberate? Chance? Do these playlists cascade from one track to the next – meaning I’m more likely to get a more downtempo number after another downtempo number? Is there something in the algorithm which takes into account the criteria of a good mixtape of yore – as explored at length in Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity – for a mix of moods within one thematic collection?
Of course, on the issue of the playlist’s perceived quality, maybe because it’s only drawing tracks from ones I own I’m more likely to enjoy whatever it throws up. By this reckoning it is, in its cold, algorithmic way, stroking my ego and telling me what brilliant taste I have.
I’m fairly confident that none of this blog’s readers, having read mouth-agape at the playlist above, will agree.
Despite that… anyone with any knowledge of these algorithms – or possession of a good link that explains the Apple one going on here – please add what you know below. I’d love to find out more, but all I’ve found about the Genius feature is speculation, so far.
* For legal reasons, I’d like to say now: I don’t mean this. I’d really rather you didn’t do this. K? Thanks.
Ah. Remember the pre digital music era? Remember cassette tapes filling the bottom of your rucksack on long trips? Saturday afternoon trips to the local Woolworths to see if you could find that song you heard on the radio? Being stuck with the same album again and again because you forgot to swap the tape? Losing the tape (but never, it seemed, the case)?
