Genius is a function in iTunes that groups together music that makes a cohesive playlist. There’s been a lot of speculation about their algorithms, but the general suspicion is that they are leveraging data from iTunes store purchases as saying that if a person bout X and Y then X and Y probably sound good together. Combine millions of datapoints like that and you get a surprisingly effective algorithm, though occasionally a clunker will show up 🙂

I admit I tend to jump around a bit when listening, either using Genius playlists or shuffle (the latter can be painful since I’ve got such a weird diversity in my collection, though – Miles Davis to Nightnoise to Was Not Was to Linkin Park to Moxy Fruvous makes for musical trainwrecks!

I’m a big fan of Afro Celt Sound System, but the albums of theirs I seem to gravitate toward the most are “Release” and “Further in Time”. I haven’t spent as much time listening to “Seed” and “Anatomic”. It’s also nice to see someone else favoring Enigma’s “Screen Behind the Mirror”, which I think is one of their best even though it often tends to be overshadowed by their earlier albums “MCMXC a.D.” and “The Cross of Changes”.

That actually describes the majority of my music collection 🙂 The Duhks, Eastmountainsouth, John Gorka, Patty Griffin, and Richard Shindell, among many others. I mostly lean to folk and Celtic, and fusions of the two with rock. The above playlist is mostly just an upbeat/trancey set for a weekend morning.

But then, I’m mostly into folk, with a bit of pop and country thrown in.