What The Killers and Velvet Revolver have in common.
The Genius Bar (in iTunes/on my iPhone, not the Apple store geeks).
I have to say, I think this works really well. I usually am the type to really want to listen to one type of music and specific songs from my playlist. So, I will sit and flip through my entire list of artists going song by song just for a playlist reasonable to what I want to listen to at that moment for an hour or two. This usually causes me to have a ton of playlists that I rarely go back and listen to again. I’m a bit lazy about deleting them in iTunes though.
Anyway, I chose “All The Things That I’ve Done” by The Killers as the inaugeral song to use. “Slither” by Velvet Revolver was among the 24 other songs it added. A few seemed like a bit of a stretch like “Dammit” by Blink 182, so I have to wonder if the artists being similarly classified affects it a decent enough amount for the songs to be kind of different. Nonetheless, it was pretty dead on with a few similar ones (from my personal collection of course, not ones it recommends I buy) such as “Like A Stone” by Audioslave. All the songs flow very well minus 1-2 where I just didn’t feel like listening to that song at the time. It has been a pretty good mix of pop-type music from the more electronic bands of the 80s, 90s music that you’d hear on every popular station with a morning zoo show, and a few rock songs thrown in for good mix.
I honestly was surprised that some of the songs I wouldn’t have thought to put together actually worked well in the same playlist. I know I’m describing playlists like a recipe for some kind of meal, but I think its sort of the equivalent. I imagine I’ll continue to play around with this function for quite awhile unless this first playlist happens to have been a fluke, which I doubt. The nice thing is that it will continually get smarter based on your own playlist and all other iTunes users. Hard to argue with an entire world’s iTunes’ usage records as far as similar-sounding songs.
Thumbs up on the Genius Bar. My iPhone continues to amaze me.
-Falaris