iTunes Genius brings back memories of my 80s mix tapes

I finally got around to trying out the new Genius playlist feature in iTunes and I must say I am impressed.

If you are not familiar with how the Genius playlist works, let me give you a brief noobie-esque run-down. The first step is to turn on, or enable, Genius in the iTunes application. This allows the iTunes software to scan through and categorize all of your music.

Once this is done, the next step is to find a song in your iTunes music library that you feel like listening to. But before playing the song, you first click the Genius button at the bottom of the iTunes window. Then Genius goes to work and creates a Genius playlist of 25 songs that all “fit” with the original song you selected.

Here’s an example. This morning I was feeling a little old school so I selected the song Come Sail Away by Styx. After clicking the Genius button, Genius put together a playlist with my original selection along with other selections from my music library by Journey, Foreigner, The Cars, The Who, Cheap Trick, Supertramp, The Eagles, John Mellencamp, Elton John, Peter Gabriel, Talking Heads, Billy Joel, Bad Company, Boston, Kansas, The Wallflowers, REO Speedwagon and Rush. Quite a selection.

If I’m in the mood for country, I just select a song by Carrie Underwood and watch as Genius quickly builds a playlist with other artists such as Rascal Flatts, Faith Hill, Martina McBride, Kenny Chesney, Brad Paisley and several more.

Of course it helps if you have a large and varied music selection for this all to work.

I may be dating myself but this reminds me of when I used to create my own mix tapes over 20 years ago. Back then it took me hours and hours to find the perfect music and carefully blend them together in the perfect sequence. Now Genius does the same in under five seconds.