Is Steve Jobs gonna die?<\/p>\n
I certainly hope not.\u00c2\u00a0 But all I know is his health has now overshadowed the company’s products.\u00c2\u00a0 And for that I blame the media.<\/p>\n
Same deal with Sarah Palin.\u00c2\u00a0 She’s a cute mom from the frontier, the public must love her!\u00c2\u00a0 Tell me how much they love her when she and her old man get elected and institute the heinous policies they stand for and personality goes into the back seat, like with our bummer President today.<\/p>\n
I don’t know who’s worse, the ignorant public or the out of touch, herd mentality media.\u00c2\u00a0 Your job in the media is TO GET THE STORY!\u00c2\u00a0 Not to be friends with your subjects.\u00c2\u00a0 Being friends, making it high school, gets in the way of getting the story. But in our social networked world everybody’s so afraid of being friendless they think of relationship first, reality second.<\/p>\n
Like Pandora.\u00c2\u00a0 We’re supposed to love it because Tim Westergren is standing up to the lame labels.\u00c2\u00a0 He is!\u00c2\u00a0 The music industry is trying to extract a pound of flesh, which will kill the service.\u00c2\u00a0 Just another instance of how the industry hamstrings entrepreneurs.\u00c2\u00a0 But, if this is so, how did Apple come up with its Genius Sidebar?<\/p>\n
If you use and enjoy Pandora you’ve got a lot more money than sense.\u00c2\u00a0 Meaning you pay for the service, so you can click through its lame suggestions.\u00c2\u00a0 Or you’re truly cheap, and listen to what they purvey.\u00c2\u00a0 With suggestions so lame, it’s like saying someone who likes chop suey will love sea urchins…\u00c2\u00a0 How do they come up with this stuff?<\/p>\n
I’m not sure computers will ever be able to recommend what people like.\u00c2\u00a0 But I am interested in what others who like what I do also like.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s the essence of Apple’s Genius service.\u00c2\u00a0 And it provides a ton of results and it’s FREE!<\/p>\n
While the media has been debating the meaning of Jobs’ skinniness, the faithful have downloaded iTunes 8.\u00c2\u00a0 Which delivers the Genius service.<\/p>\n
Your library is scanned and uploaded to Apple and results come back.\u00c2\u00a0 Supposedly, Big Brother is not keeping this data so the RIAA can subpoena it, so you can get busted for not paying for your music, but I’m taking this on faith.\u00c2\u00a0 And I wanted to check the new service out.<\/p>\n
Bottom line…\u00c2\u00a0 You play a song in iTunes and the Genius Sidebar (which you can turn off), shows the Top Albums it comes from, the Top Songs You’re Missing from this same act and a list of Recommendations.<\/p>\n
It’s fascinating.\u00c2\u00a0 And free.<\/p>\n
I dialed up Boston’s "Hitch A Ride".\u00c2\u00a0 What is usually referred to as a guilty pleasure, but is just truly great.\u00c2\u00a0 The recommended Boston songs were "Amanda", "Smokin’", "Let Me Take You Home Tonight", "Don’t Look Back" and "Something About You".\u00c2\u00a0 I’m not sure "Don’t Look Back" fits, then again, that’s the point!\u00c2\u00a0 Just because you love soft doesn’t mean you can’t love harder.\u00c2\u00a0 And vice versa.<\/p>\n
The recommended tracks are fascinating…<\/p>\n
"Rocky Mountain Way".\u00c2\u00a0 Yes, a fan of "Hitch A Ride" would like this…\u00c2\u00a0 And there are a bunch of Styx and REO Speedwagon tracks.\u00c2\u00a0 Two acts I pooh-pooh, but I must state I have a fondness for the recommended "Roll With The Changes", which came from the "Tuna Fish" album, before the band wimped out on "Hi Infidelity".\u00c2\u00a0 And there are a couple of Rush tracks.\u00c2\u00a0 All you Rush fanatics who constantly e-mail me!\u00c2\u00a0 Your band has not been forgotten!\u00c2\u00a0 I should check them out.\u00c2\u00a0 And even Edgar Winter’s "Frankenstein".<\/p>\n
My most played iTunes track is Walt Wilkins’ "Wrapped".\u00c2\u00a0 Pandora would choke on this.\u00c2\u00a0 But I’ve got a long list of country acts I’ve never heard of to now check out.<\/p>\n
But the problem is, I can’t click and listen to the complete recommended tracks.\u00c2\u00a0 I’d pay for that.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s the kind of service I want.\u00c2\u00a0 Music discovery I can perform instantly, instantly clicking off shit I don’t want.<\/p>\n
But it gets better than that…\u00c2\u00a0 Click the Genius button in the lower right hand corner of iTunes and you get YOUR OWN GENIUS PLAYLIST!\u00c2\u00a0 Yup, you get an instant playlist OF YOUR OWN TRACKS!\u00c2\u00a0 Anywhere from 25 to 100 tracks, your choice.<\/p>\n
What the labels don’t realize is Apple is no longer dependent upon them.\u00c2\u00a0 The iPhone needs no music, and neither does the iPod Touch.\u00c2\u00a0 To fight Apple is taking the wrong road.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, if NBC can settle with the company, maybe you can too.\u00c2\u00a0 No higher prices, but maybe package prices.\u00c2\u00a0 The key is to expose people to more music, to sell more music.<\/p>\n
Maybe Genius is another Visualizer.\u00c2\u00a0 A bell, a whistle that intrigues at first, but is then forgotten.\u00c2\u00a0 But, how are we going to discover new music in the future?\u00c2\u00a0 And how are we going to consume it?<\/p>\n
These are questions that must be addressed.\u00c2\u00a0 It must be easy for consumers to browse, efficiently, make sense of the zillions of tracks out there.\u00c2\u00a0 But it must be even easier to sample said tracks, IN THEIR ENTIRETY!<\/p>\n
iTunes 8 is not perfect.\u00c2\u00a0 You can’t eliminate the Buy arrow in the main window, which you could do previously.\u00c2\u00a0 But Apple is still innovating.\u00c2\u00a0 The star of Tuesday’s presentation wasn’t the latest Nano iteration, but the software, the iTunes 8 upgrade, free, with Genius.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s why Apple keeps winning.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s about the SOFTWARE STUPID!\u00c2\u00a0 Anybody can make a hardware device, have it constructed for cheap in China.\u00c2\u00a0 But creating a seamless user experience, an integration of hardware and software, that’s tough.<\/p>\n
Criticize Jobs all you want.\u00c2\u00a0 Apple too.\u00c2\u00a0 You’re just sour grapes.\u00c2\u00a0 The adoption of Macs at the home level is positively staggering.\u00c2\u00a0 And this is purely as a result of usability.\u00c2\u00a0 You thought price was paramount.\u00c2\u00a0 But then why did Wal-Mart not win in online music?\u00c2\u00a0 Amazon sells everything, but its music offerings look no different from books and electronics, there’s no sexiness, no thrill.\u00c2\u00a0 iTunes is your village and your village alone.<\/p>\n
This is not being a fanboy, but pointing out the direction home.\u00c2\u00a0 Focus on making it a better user experience.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s how Google won.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s how Apple won.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s how the labels lost.\u00c2\u00a0 By suing their consumers and still wanting them to buy the whole damn album to hear one goddamn track.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s like making you watch CBS from 8-11 in order to see "CSI".\u00c2\u00a0 Utterly ridiculous.<\/p>\n
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