Review: Zune MixView is not quite a Genius

In James Suroweicki's The Wisdom of Crowds, the New Yorker writer argues that popular opinion trumps critical judgment. Well, sort of. His main point is that each person has a strong opinion that, when gathered collectively, equals an "uber-opinion" that is almost always right. I think he's mostly correct, at least in terms of statistical averages, although I also like the Black Swan idea where anomalies sort of jump the rails, and the long tail concept, where everyone has a distinct taste that counters the popular view.

If you've been following the latest developments in music software, as I do, then you know Apple has tapped into the common collective with the Genius feature in iTunes 8. Now, Microsoft gets in on the game with Zune 3, released today with about as much fanfare as a Joe Biden speech. Zune software also looks at the "wisdom of crowds" by examining playlists of other Zune users, and in my own testing today, it works okay but not great. You click the Mixview option next to any artist (or right-click a CD and select Mixview) and you can see album covers in varying sizes that represent recommendations that are similar or related in some way.

Here's an example. If you like Okkervil River, Zune suggests Rilo Kiley - a band that does sound fairly similar. For older, more mainstream artists - say, The Posies - the suggestions are also good. However, for one of my favorite bands, Copeland, the suggestions are limited, just Brandtson and Magnolia Electric Company. (Another suggestion, Jenny Lewis, is not even in the same ballpark.) Apple iTunes 8 just went nuts with Copeland suggestions: Mae, Waking Ashland, Circa Survive, Sherwood. I repeated this same comparison test several times: iTunes found good suggestions for Anberlin and Autechre, but Zune did not. With so many artists available, this random approach is the only one that really works, unless someone wants to start with the A bands and work down the Zs.

I'm still not impressed with iTunes Genius - it still doesn't find any recommendations for Okkervil River and a bunch of other indie bands I like, but we'll see - maybe the cloud will figure this out.