Courtesy of Federico Carthy of Robot Forest
One of the great things about the new iTunes 8 is the ability to make automatic playlists from songs you like with the new Genius feature. So if you’re listening to Beck’s new Modern Guilt and want to put together a playlist that relates to that song, all you have to do is click on the Genius button on the bottom right and voila! You’ve got a playlist.
Contrary to popular belief, however, this isn’t some sort of magic or witchcraft. It’s all done automatically following certain rules and crazy codes. And the best part about the Genius feature is that it can get smarter. There are two things that you can do to help it out if the playlists it’s making for you seem kind of random.
1) Rate your music. The star rating system isn’t just for visual purposes. If you tell iTunes what music you like, it will make it easier for the Genius feature to figure out what music to compile for you based on what you like.
2) Make sure to set the correct genre for your music. Even though you may consider Aphex Twin to be Techno music, iTunes has it listed as Electronic. Tagging your music with the correct genre will also help it compile smarter playlists for you. To do this I’ve been looking up artists on the iTunes store and following their genre listings. Just search for the artist you want and see what genre iTunes is listing it under.
Tags: Tips & Tricks, Tutorial