At the behest of friends, I’ve been tinkering with Apple’s iTunes Genius mixes, watching the media player filter through the 20,000 songs in my library and organize them into smart playlists. Like Pandora Radio, Genius relies upon genre classifications and user-generated data to determine which artists and songs belong together.
But I’ve stumbled upon a problem. And it’s name is Bob Marley.
First, I must make two clarification points:
- I have very eclectic musical taste. Hip-hop, zydeco, classical, jazz, country, funk, classic rock, alt rock, disco, punk, bubble-gum pop, death metal, African, sing-a-long children’s music—it’s all there. In other words, I’m not a militant reggae fan.
- When I was a high school teacher, I would occasionally allow students to listen to music, selected from my iPod. Invariably, arguments would ensue. There was only one artist, without fail, that united every class: Bob Marley.
So, admittedly, I have a biased view of Bob Marley’s music, considering it to be a unifying force in the musical universe, and conversely, a thread that ties neatly into almost any playlist.
But, iTunes Genius organizes my music into 12 mix groups, none of which include reggae (nor any world music, for that matter).
When I make a Genius playlist from one of Marley’s songs, say “Three Little Birds,” I only get return results that include Ziggy Marley (Bob’s son), Jimmy Clif, and some other less known reggae artists in my collection. There’s no connection outside reggae.
Even when I try making a Genius playlist with a song by The Police, Sting’s band from the 1970s and 1980s, which can (and should) be classified as reggae, pop, and rock—I get no Bob Marley in the results.
In fact, unless I seek out Bob Marley directly, Genius never plays his music. Famous African singer Miriam Makeba, Cuban-born Queen of Salsa Celia Cruz, and a host of other significant world artists in my library are completely overlooked by iTunes Genius.
Is this a limitation of relying on technology and the cloud to make our decisions? Is this a fluke in my personal music library?
Tell me what other musical exclusions and quirks you’ve discovered with iTunes Genius, or if it’s working well for you!
And a very special happy birthday to George Lacson, my friend and former roommate. George, who played bass on John Lee Hooker Junior‘s Grammy-nominated album “All Odds Against Me,” is currently recording The George Lacson Project EP.
I am glad to see that I am not the only one to notice this strange “bias” that iTunes has against Bob Marley, an artist who’s music and message of political participation is to most inspirational and timeless, a musician who is considered to be the one of the “most influential musicians of all time. In 1999 Time magazine dubbed Bob Marley and the Wailers’ Exodus the greatest album of the 20th Century, while the BBC named One Love the song of the millennium.” Yet, iTunes so-called Genius feature creates no mix based on this iconoclastic individual? I usually “think different” about Apple, but in this inexplicable omission I fear the ominous undercurrents of what motivation I am perplexed to divine.
Bizarre, right?