iTunes 8, pretty neat.

So I have of course upgraded to iTunes 8. So far I like it. That new visualizer looks pretty good, though I'm not really feeling that new album art song scrolling thing. It's neat, but I know I'll never use it.

I like Genius though. If you don't know what it is, it makes playlists for songs out of songs that go good with that song. It's neat. It also works on the iTunes store. If you open the Genius Sidebar, it recommends songs that you might like that go with whatever song you have highlighted in the song list. You can preview and buy them right there, and so far, I like Genius. Apparently instead of working by analyzing BPM and other such things regarding the song, it works via the internet. Genius keeps a database of all the music listened to by everyone who uses it. It keeps track of songs, ratings, plays, things like that. Then it somehow turns all that data into knowledge of which songs go with which other songs. It sounds like it wouldn't work at all, but I'm liking it so far. If I have it make me a playlist for a song I like and have it do 25 songs, 20 or more of them will probably be songs I won't skip, especially if I'm in a mood for songs that go with a song. For example, right now I'm listening to a playlist made from Rose Royce's Car Wash. It has a lot of Earth Wind & Fire songs as well as various others that I will listen to. I've also wanted various iTunes store recommendations that it's given me for various songs.

It's also got that visualizer, which I'm liking. It seems to change it's patterns, colors, and other things depending on the mood of the song playing. And that works pretty well.