Certified Fresh and Rotten Apples
A few posts back I wrote about my frustration with the games industry for encouraging a monoculture where niche titles have a hard time finding an audience. I mentioned how music and movies have done a much better job with bringing niche content to the right audience, but even in those categories, things aren’t perfect.
Last week Apple released the latest version of iTunes with the new “Genius” feature. Basically, you select a song and click the Genius icon and iTunes will generate a playlist from your library around that song. It will also recommend songs that you don’t own that you might want to buy. As someone who has found the recommendations systems built into the iTunes store to be a valuable tool for discovering new music, I was excited to give Genius a whirl. With over 5000 songs in my library, there are doubtless plenty of songs I’ve overlooked.
First impressions boded well for the feature. Testing out a few songs from different genres, Genius generated playlists that meshed featuring songs that I uniformly liked. But the more time I spent with it, the more I realized that what seemed like its strength is Genius’ greatest flaw—namely, Genius generates the obvious.
Genius is powered by the same recommendation systems that can be so useful when browsing the store. By tracking the buying habits of millions of users, Apple does an amazing job at capturing the trends of the moment and can make very effective recommendations of obscure albums for those who take the time to follow the “Listeners also bought” trail. Because its consumer base is so large, Apple’s recommendation tools are strong, no matter how deep you go down the “long tail” of niche music. The iTunes recommendation system has two major flaws—1) it is heavily skewed towards new releases as that’s where the biggest sales and most active reviewers are; 2) it prefers strong quantitative associations over qualitative.
To illustrate these problems, let’s look at the album Neon Bible by the Arcade Fire (one of my favorite albums, BTW). It’s the latest album by a contemporary Canadian indy rock band, but by no means obscure. For fans of this album, iTunes recommends the latest albums by the Shins, LCD Soundystem, the National, Spoon and Wilco. On the song and Artist level, you’ll find Wolf Parade, Interpol and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs added to the list. Basically, you have a bunch of the standards of mainstream Alt/Indy rock for the past couple years. Are these good recommendations? Well, they’re certainly safe in that all of these bands are approximately equal in popularity. There’s nothing obscure, nothing from a jarringly different genre. A much better recommendation than any of those would be Bruce Springsteen, who is the most influential artist on the Arcade Fire, and whose music would actually mix better side-by-side with theirs. Similarly, older listeners who don’t follow up-and-coming indy bands but who like the Boss might be very fond of the Arcade Fire. Sadly, iTunes doesn’t help in that direction either, with Springsteen leading to recommendations of U2, John Mellencamp, the Who and other institutions.
There are plenty of other tools out there to find the music associations that iTunes can’t, from music blogs to services like Rhapsody and Pandora—I just had hopes that with Genius, Apple might have found a way to make their service, well, smarter. On the contrary, it only serves to make iTunes shortcomings even more frustrating by making playlists that seem culled from singles and greatest hits. New songs yield nothing but other new acts on the Genius playlist, and genres seldom intermingle. I like some hip hop and some girl bands, and I am probably someone unusual but hardly unique in that I like to mix the two in my custom playslists – Genius would never create a playlist like that.
The sidebar, which recommends items not on your playlist is probably the biggest missed opportunity here. Apple leaves them as passive recommendations with the option to play a 30 second preview. As implemented, this feature is only useful if I’m in active shopping mode, as playing the recommendations interrupts my regular listening, and I’m only getting a 30 second preview. Once again, Apple plays it far too safe here. A smarter way to handle this would be to automatically slip new songs into your playlist for 1 time use, then reminding you in the sidebar which songs played you don’t own.
As it stands, Genius is better than “shuffle” at creating a pleasing playlist, but it’s hardly revolutionary. With other places offering digital music cheaper and offering more sophisticated recommendation systems, Apple really needs to step up their game here if they hope to retain the appearance of mavericks.
On the movie front, one of the biggest success stories in separating the good from the bad is rottentomatoes.com. Films are rated “fresh” or “rotten” based on a meta-critic rating. The reasoning here is that the average score of 100 reviewers will lead to a more useful and objective score than that of any one critic. It’s a fun reference, and a handy starting point for reading more detailed reviews, but as a recommendation tool, it is hugely flawed. Certainly it does an effective job of recognizing the very best and very worst of movies, but stuff in the middle… the ratings are pretty much worthless. A movie that 70% of critics thought was just OK is ranked fresh, whereas a decisive film that 50% love and 50% hate is rotten. It disturbs me that the Tomato-ometer ratings get as much weight as they do, and that the idea of a critical bias is looked down on. You want biased critics! Understanding how your tastes measure up to an individual critics is a more useful tool for finding films you’ll like than following the averages of all critics.
Case in point, three new releases on DVD/Blu-Ray that were all rated rotten but that I would put on my top 10 list for the year: Youth Without Youth, Speed Racer and The Fall (23%, 31%, 44% respectively according to top critics. Going beyond the numbers, each of these films has one thing in common—they are highly decisive. These aren’t movies that fell off the radar – they were each subject to some very harsh critical lashings. Each, however, had a minority voice that praised the film in the most glowing of terms. Clearly they’re not for everybody, but they are far more likely to illicit a real reaction from the viewer than “fresh” movies like Kung-Fu Panda and Forgetting Sarah Marshall.
Originally this post was just going to be mini-reviews of those three films. Now I’ve got a dinner party to prepare for and some Force Unleashed to play, so you’ll have to wait until tomorrow to find out why I think those three rotton movies are worth your time.
Also, expect some new Labyrinth preview art this week–certified fresh, I assure you.
21. September 2008 at 7:25 pm :
YAY to the new Labyrinth art. And to all else… I think you need less caffeine in your diet.
21. September 2008 at 7:26 pm :
By the way, I’m just teasing about the caffeine.
22. September 2008 at 5:28 am :
New art!
All right!
I don’t own an ipod, so most of the stuff about the features was like “huh?” to me. However, I agree rottentomatoes.com is a pretty good site for checking up on movies that your considering seeing. I haven’t been on in forever, but it used to be the only movie website I trusted. Now I have about five in my bookmarks and usually just click one at random.
22. September 2008 at 5:47 am :
Ugh, I think iPod’s are slowly taking over the world. Last year I wouldn’t be caught dead with one, but then my Mom got me one for Christmas and I have to say it does pretty well as a MP3 Player…
The genius feature would be pretty useless for me though. I only have about 170 songs on my iPod, so it probably would generate the same playlists over and over again.
And I rarely go to movies, so when I see a commercial that gets me really excited for a movie then it wouldn’t matter what any reviews say. If I don’t know if I want to see it then I usually check out the Wikipedia page or IMDB to read the plot. If it seems okay then chances I’ll make the effort to go see it.
22. September 2008 at 9:12 am :
I adore the new Genius feature. I haven’t yet discovered anything I haven’t already heard—and I have albums from all of the indie bands you listed above, some of which I found through iTunes’ Just for You—but I am confident that there are great things out there that Genius will help me discover.
Genius is funny when you play the Beatles: “Genius sidebar could not find matches for your specific selection, but here are the Top Songs and Albums in the iTunes Store.” And then it points me to Kanye, P!nk, T.I. Taylor Swift, Rihanna, Katy Perry, etc. I wish the Beatles would get over that logo copyright infringement thing and just let their music be available for purchase on iTunes.
Incidentally, I have seen the Shins, Arcade Fire (at an Obama rally!!!), and Wolf Parade all in the last year. So. Freaking. Rad.
22. September 2008 at 5:00 pm :
I cannot imagine myself without my ipod, but yeah, I get the point about how industry are trying to get consumers to cough up more money by adding these “smart and helpful” softwares on their systems to track consumer’s buying habits.
22. September 2008 at 5:13 pm :
I’m still living in the nineties. I’ve still got my CD discman and burn mix CDs…
And you don’t want to know how long I walked around with a casette player walkman.
23. September 2008 at 1:41 pm :
Cassette players are insanely impossible to find and I have a whole bunch of stuff on tape. :’( Oh well, live and learn.
I’ve heard mixed reviews about ipods, which is the reason when paired with the price that I don’t own one.
23. September 2008 at 3:32 pm :
Yay! Someone who agrees on Speed Racer!
Speed Racer was an amazing, uplifting movie. I gotta say my favourite part is when Speed meets up with Rex, or when Racer X reveals who he is and what he says to Speed.
I saw that movie the day after my cousin took his life, and it’s always going to be a very special film for me - ’cause he liked that show, and I am sure he would have wanted to see the movie.
But all that aside, I think the critics were very harsh with it, and they obviously did not really understand how much devotion and work the Wachowski brothers put into that film. It’s a family movie, but it’s a lot more than that too.
23. September 2008 at 4:03 pm :
My brother and I absolutely loved Speed Racer! It was the first time in my brother’s five years of life that he’s actually sat and watched something quietly. I was so sad that nobody seemed to like it. It was my favorite show when I was little, and now it’s my brother’s too.
The Wachowski’s should be proud of it, despite what critics say. It was fun, stunning, and in my opinion, a landmark film. Perhaps just… ahead of it’s time.
New labyrinth pics? Hmm… I wonder if my brother would like Labyrinth…
23. September 2008 at 9:09 pm :
Hey guys…you should check out this pic someone did for Return to Labyrinth:
http://sixtypixies.deviantart.com/art/The-Two-Sarahs-97342673
I love how Moppet still looks like the 15 year old Sarah and Sarah stands to her side almost like her mother! I think you guys will enjoy this!
23. September 2008 at 11:58 pm :
OMG!! For those of you who missed it…Fat Guy in the Internet made fun of the Labyrinth! You can watch it here:
http://www.adultswim.com/video/?episodeID=8a2505951b981e52011b9ee3b4840153
It’s disturbing and a bit funny…thought I should share this with you!
24. September 2008 at 8:26 am :
Disturbing is right… I feel raped by it.
24. September 2008 at 8:57 am :
only slightly more disturbing than seeing the giant jareth in the office at 3am :(((
24. September 2008 at 9:10 am :
HAHA! Oh, the Fat Guy trapped in the Internet bit. That WHOLE episode spoofed Labyrinth. This is just a small clip of it. There’s a great part where the ‘Maze Master’ meets up with him in the underground maze. And The Fat Guy says ‘You’re just stalling for time!’ And Maze Master, while watching his giant digital watch goes ‘Nooooooooo I’mmmmmmmmm NNNNNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT’-while watching the clock- ‘TTTTTTTTTTTTTTT.’
As for Cassette player walkmans… Believe it or not Walmarts in Upstate New York still carry them. They’re pretty cheap too. Or you can get a cassette tape recorder. They almost all have headphone jacks in them. Just be careful not to hit the red button when listening to a beloved mix tape.
24. September 2008 at 9:23 am :
Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim is VERY fond of David Bowie. I think he might be a quiet investor. Venture Brothers, for example, makes a LOT of David Bowie references. One episode has the ghost of Major Tom haunting a ship while The Action Man (reference to the song Ashes to Ashes) is sleeping with his wife. The first scene is all David Bowie lyrics spliced together. Another episode has that one eyed female assassin working for David Bowie to kidnap a Panda bear from a character based on Walt Disney.
And one really great two parter has David Bowie (voiced by an impersonator of course) as secretly being a powerful shape shifter. And it ended with one of the boys pointing and shouting ‘The guy from Labyrinth just turned into a bird!’
24. September 2008 at 7:28 pm :
David Bowie parodies seem to be a new fad. Flight of the Conchords did the same thing. My seventeen year old sister dragged me out of bed to see it last time it was on, knowing how much I love all things Bowie.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4zV4pJ8MwM
24. September 2008 at 8:31 pm :
I’ve seen that one too. David Bowie loves to mock himself so I bet he’s getting a kick out of all the fresh attention in pop culture.
24. September 2008 at 8:36 pm :
I actually kind of wonder why Venture Brothers didn’t just get David Bowie to do his own voice. Sure it’s fun to mock someone with an impersonator who can exagerate Bowie’s Britness but as far as getting him to do a voice he’s not THAT expensive of an actor. The guy who voice’s Brock is Cronk from Disney’s Emperor’s New Groove and Buzz Light Year from the Buzz lightyear animated series. I don’t think Bowie would cost much more than him.
I think it would be funny if they got Bowie to voice someone else and then pit him against the Venture Brothers version of David Bowie. It would be like the Saturday Night live Skit where Mick Jagger played Keith Richards while Mike Meyers was playing Mick Jagger. Now that was hillarious.