As is the trend with every Apple-related announcement, Apple stock rises during the hype of initial rumors and drops shortly after the keynote simply fails to live up to expectations. Apple could've put a man on the moon this morning and fanboys would've still expected a monkey on Venus. Although users were not blessed with the announcement of a Beatles' release, the company did offer Genius Mixes and the iTunes' LP. ReadWriteWeb covered the news earlier this morning, now we take an in-depth look at Apple's latest music-related releases. ]]>
Genius Mixes With the new iPhone OS, iTunes automatically creates playlists using choices from the user's pre-existing music library. Twelve default playlists appear under the device playlist section and users can also create Genius Mixes on their own by selecting a song and setting length parameters. While it's certainly a cool feature, it's tough to tell how common songs are paired. We suspect songs are categorically matched rather than matched via musical similarities. This could be a problem if you only listen to music categorized as "eighties".
iTunes LP: Unsurprisingly, the iTunes' LP effort (codenamed Cocktail) is a mild let down. While the LPs do offer liner notes, videos and special tracks, they don't necessarily offer more than what fan sites offer. And fan sites continue to evolve while these LPs will not expand in scope. If Apple really wanted to make this amazing, it would open up the "interactive album" into something that fans could actually interact with rather than just consume. The LP is definitely a gorgeous collection of media, but it's confined to a CD-rom like experience when it doesn't have to be.
Sharing Features: While it may seem like a small change, greater Facebook and Twitter integration with the iTunes store may have huge affects on how we consume music. For now, users can add music to their Wishlists and share the links to their Twitter and Facebook friends. Automated messages default to a plain link; however, they can easily be used for gift registry purposes. Depending on how information is used to sync to social networks in the future, music and playlist gifting via social networks may take over from those silly $1 birthday animations.