The Genius is loose, as is one of his screws.

First up let's be clear, I like iTunes a lot. When I got my first iPod (a 60Gb video) I didn’t pay much attention to iTunes, and as such spent more time trying to decide what to listen to, than listening to it. Two things changed that, one was adding an iPod Shuffle to my collection, and the other - because I wanted to get the most out of that little gadget - was learning more about iTunes. More specifically about Smart Playlists.

If you use iTunes, and you're not one of those folks who listens only to entire albums, then you need to learn a little about Smart Playlists. A little Googling led me to Andy Budd's superb setup. A slightly modified version of that, and a couple of nights spent tagging and rating my library, and I now effectively have a set of self-updating 'radio stations' on my PC and iPods.

Much like this feature, which has been around for ages, I have also been late in switching on to another little widget - albeit a more recent one. The iTunes 'Genius'.

Here's what Apple have to say about it:

"The new Genius feature in iTunes 8 creates the perfect playlist. Just select a song, click the Genius button, and iTunes generates a playlist of songs from your library that go great with it. You decide how many songs appear in your Genius playlist — 25, 50, or 100. Refresh your Genius playlist to get new results. Or save your Genius playlist so you always have it."

So what we’re looking at is essentially a little techy widget that creates mix tapes for you? Cool! I grew up (musically speaking) in the 80’s and 90’s – the golden era of mix tapes – this was made for me!

So I decided to fire it up and give it a go. It took a little while to set up, probably mainly due to the size of my library (around 7,000 tracks, and I've only got up to 'I' in terms of uploading my CD collection), but I watched some TV and came back to find it ready to roll.

My first instinct with things like this is to try and 'break' them, to go as left-field as I can to see how well they cope. Because I'd been listening to his stuff recently, I 'seeded' Genius with Tim Minchin's "Ten foot cock and a few hundred virgins" - a snappy little ditty on the issue of double standards in various religious texts.

[side note: Open-minded adults only! If you've got a minute or two give it a watch - it's not as subversive as it sounds, and it really is clever, but you'll need a sense of humour - you have been warned!]

I guess I really wasn't all that surprised to be told that Genius didn't have anything for me on that one, even though I have the rest of the same CD - along with Eddie Izzard, Bill Hicks, Derek & Clive, and a bunch of similar bits in my collection. The majority of folks will be using iTunes for 'proper' music won't they?

So I decided to let the Genius warm up a little, and went mainstream. "Invisible Sun" by The Police. I was fiddling around on a couple of websites and before I knew it I was listening to U2, Bowie, and then a Sting solo track - all pretty good so far - but then something strange happened...

It took a second, and then the riff hit home - "Living After Midnight" by Judas Priest. Hmmm, interesting. A couple more decent suggestions followed, REM and The Clash, before things went off at a tangent again - Kiss with "Shout It Out Loud"

Maybe Genius is just being like Empire Records' Eddie - trying to widen my horizons a little – but I can’t help thinking that Apple have some tweaking to do. I really don’t mind the odd diversion from the main road, but – having played around a bit – I can see all sorts of fun and games on the horizon for some users.

A quiet night in snuggled up with your new girlfriend (or boyfriend, ladies – or maybe girlfriend, your prerogative and all that). Point the Genius toward Dusty Springfield’s “Son of a Preacher Man” and sit back to enjoy the moment. The Foundations follow (“Build Me Up, Buttercup”), then Sheryl Crow… OK I don’t have that much old stuff, so it’s already stretching things a little, but I imagine your crafty ‘yawn-stretch-and-put-your-arm-around-his/her-shoulder’ move is going to come to a screeching halt when Guns ‘n’ Roses start to tell you how they “..used to love her, but [they] had to kill her”

Maybe you want to convince your Mum that your musical tendencies aren’t that bad really, and that she’d quite like some of your stuff. Maybe you make her a mix-CD seeded from one of those nice acoustic tracks off the second CD of ‘In Your Honour’ by the Foo Fighters. I expect she’d be quite happy driving the Mondeo down to Tesco’s for the weekly shop, listening to Radiohead and The Killers, but when the Deftones hit “Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away)” kicks in she’d better not be in the process of trying to manoeuvre into their tight parking spots. (OK, so it’s far from the nastiest Deftones track, but still…)

Of course it seems that there’ll be one situation that you shouldn’t have problems with. Seed Genius with something like Soilwork, and it’s ‘metal’ all the way. Bloodsimple, Lamb of God, Arch Enemy, God Forbid…

I have no idea how Genius works, but it seems to have a tendency toward the… alternative, shall we say. Works for me, but I suspect it could take a bit of tweaking before it really hits its full potential.