Sort artists by last name and find missing digital booklets
This week’s column is a grab bag, where I look at a number of interesting questions about Genius, sorting albums by an artist’s last name, finding digital booklets in your iTunes library, and more.
Q: I use Genius quite often and wonder how it works. Is it similar to Pandora where music is analyzed and matched using computer algorithms, or is it “crowd sourced,” based on matches done by other iTunes Genius users?
Also, why is Genius “unavailable” for certain songs? I’m not referring to obscure songs but songs such as “Sympathy for the Devil” and “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” by The Rolling Stones, or “No Sugar Tonight” by The Guess Who. I’ve run into quite a few other songs for which Genius is unavailable in my 7000-plus track library.
iTunes’ Genius feature is based on your music library and how it compares to the libraries of other Genius users. Apple has never officially explained the technology behind Genius, but an article in the MIT Technology Review cites a post made by an Apple engineer on Quora (which has since been removed) that said that information from a user’s iTunes library is “folded into a larger database of users and songs.”
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http://www.macworld.com/article/2047170/sort-artists-by-last-name-and-find-missing-digital-booklets.html#tk.rss_all
