Andy Lester ([info]petdance) wrote,
@ 2009-01-21 15:20:00
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Entry tags:music itunes

iTunes Genius is kinda smart
OK, iTunes genius is kinda smart. While I played "The Needle Lies" by Queensryche, it recommended
"Cindy's On Methadone" by Screeching Weasel, "Junkie" by the Dead Milkmen, "Sister Morphine" by Marianne Faithful and a Syd Barrett track.

I wonder if there's some sort of topic database back in there.


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[info]mshonle
2009-01-22 02:44 am UTC (link)
My intuition is that they use some form of single-variable decomposition, which would infer the "topics." But that begs the question(*), where do they get the database from? Playlists? Album purchases?

(*) So purist would say that is not "begging the question." But I think it wouldn't fit to say "raises the question," because there is an element of a deeper question not being answered. Besides, grammar nazis are nazis and are often wrong.

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[info]petdance
2009-01-22 02:45 am UTC (link)
I don't know what you mean when you say "single-variable composition."

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[info]mshonle
2009-01-22 02:52 am UTC (link)
Whoops! Single *value* decomposition. As in

http://rainbow.mimuw.edu.pl/~ap/ap_kdd.pdf
http://www.cs.carleton.edu/cs_comps/0607/recommend/recommender/svd.html

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[info]petdance
2009-01-22 02:55 am UTC (link)
Well, that doesn't help me any. :-/

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[info]mshonle
2009-01-22 03:11 am UTC (link)
It's the system used in the Netflix competition. Many modern recommendation systems use it.

Basically, it comes up with categories based on the data. For example, looking at certain movie selections, it can come up with a ranking of all movies "for people who like action movies, but without too much gore." But that topic would be completely inferred. It doesn't know anything about the content of any of the movies, but some things come into pretty good contrast with it. Other lists that it generates are just inscrutable, and perhaps noise, but who knows?

It seems Apple's twist is the *sequence* of songs played (unless people are reading too much into what they hear) and not just the selection of songs to play. So, maybe it's using something like Markov chains or some pairing of things... Oh, I don't know. Maybe there's a paper saying exactly what it does.

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[info]cinda1212
2009-01-23 02:35 pm UTC (link)
I have that all the time, too. it even seems to get similarly tempo'd songs, similar sounding artists, etc. - in addition to the common title or theme.

Genius makes (most of the time) pretty genius playlists. most of the time, i'd like to save them - but I'm not sure how. I think it also has to do with ratings, because most of my genius choices are very highly rated (but not all) - and most of my collection is NOT rated yet.

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