While Karen oftentimes shakes her head at how quickly I adopt new features and new toys, in my defense, there are many from which I opt out. I was thinking about that this morning as I pondered how to spend the rest of an iTunes gift card that’s burning a proverbial hole in my digital wallet. Those thoughts sort of collided with recent reticence about a re-design of iTunes of which I’ve heard mixed reactions (and haven’t quite gotten around to installing myself), and I remembered that nifty little functionality built into iTunes called Genius.
I’ve never used that.
It’s not that I’m not used to recommendations generated by some sort of computer algorithm, and I suspect that neither are you, that is if you’ve ever received one of those emails from Amazon recommending stuff based upon your previous purchases. Perhaps its because these algorithms fail miserably in their attempt to mathematically predict human behavior (which I like the sound of), or perhaps its just because my tastes in reading and music are so eclectic, but these recommendations never hit the mark for me. The books and music and even the applications that I purchase are almost always the result of a recommendation from a friend, acquaintance, or, at the very least, listening to someone talk about it on a show or podcast somewhere. I don’t buy things based off of “recommended for you” sorts of automated emails because they’re almost never interesting to me.
That said, can anyone recommend some good music? Thanks.