How do I create a Genius playlist in Apple iTunes 8?

I have to admit that when I first started playing with the Genius feature I was underwhelmed. In fact, the first draft of my earlier blog entry basically said "this is just some dumb way to sell songs on the iTunes Store", but the more I have experimented with it, the more I can see its value and appreciate what Apple's done.

I will also add that it's clear that the more music you have, the better this feature will work, because if I have, say, a collection of opera music and one jazz album, well, then it's going to have a hard time finding similar music to a jazz standard that I might be enjoying at the time. Fortunately I have over 500 CDs scanned into my library so there was plenty for the Genius to sink its virtual teeth into!

Once you do have the Genius feature turned on and it's scanned your library and sent the data up to the Apple Store, you can actually utilize it.

To do so, start by picking a favorite song and listening to it. Then you can either click on the "File" menu:

Or just right-click on the song in the main display:

I'll do the latter, choosing "Start Genius", and literally less than a second later, I had a pretty decent playlist on the screen:

Listening to a song from Al Jarreau, it's quite good to suggest Michael Franks, David Sanborn, Frank Sinatra, Earl Klugh, Lionel Hampton, Tom Scott and even branching out a bit to Linda Ronstadt, Quincy Jones and Barbra Streisand.

Looks good? Click on the "Save Playlist" button on the very top right corner and *poof* you have a Genius playlist:

If you'd like it to be bigger than just the 25 entries that are the default, note that you can click on the size menu and choose something larger:

Finally, if you really love what the Genius has done, you can also burn a CD with all of the music too, as you'll see on the bottom right of the iTunes 8 window:

That's it. Now you're flying with the Genius feature, or iDJ as I like to consider it!