If you haven’t upgraded already, Apple – as part of their Let’s Rock event the other day – released iTunes 8. Mind you it was a bit low key as the major part of the event was based around the new 4G iPod, but none the less, welcome iTunes 8 (and naturally a newer version of Quick Time 7.5.5).
As part of the new repertoire of the full version release – lets remember this was 8.0 not just 7.6 – comes a new feature called “Genius”. The idea is you find a song you like and you click the Genius button and it comes up with a suggested play list you can then save. By default it comes up with a list of 25 items and doesn’t seem to bad, but behind the scenes, over time, it is Apple’s subtle way of getting you in to the iTunes store.
You initially submit all of your music to the Genius, then it decides to compile it all, then it is “ready”, wherein it can make its suggestions. As part of this all, you accept some new terms & agreement mumbo jumbo which says Apple can use your data to help you select songs you might like to purchase. Yup, there it is, hook, line and sinker. You’ll click one of your songs, choose Genius and as part of your list, iTunes will suggest songs for you to buy in order to complete that all important play list.
…From what I can see so far, my genius is pretty smart – I picked a country song for it and the 24 that came back were also country songs – all ones that I owned – so maybe there aren’t too many new good country songs on iTunes 
However I did choose an alternative song and the genius wasn’t too smart…I guess only time will tell, but so far I give it an 8 out of 10 – at first sight.
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