Genius Mixes is a new feature that leverages the Genius information gathered since the launch of this feature with iTunes 8 at last year's September media event. Genius Mixes can play an endless mix of songs from your iTunes library that "go great together." iTunes 9 will automatically generate 12 of these mixes by default, and more can be created by the user.
I'm understanding this feature better than when I first read about it on Twitte, and am now listening to one of the 12 prefab ones Apple gives you once you install iTunes 9 and update genius, which you need to do in order to make the feature appear (zero state needs a bit of work, there.)
The interesting thing about Genius Mixes is that they're much more black box than any other playlist feature in iTunes. As far as I can tell, there's no way to see what's coming up or a complete view of the songs that it's including. That makes it much more like a real radio station, and increases the suspense, but is a bit frustrating for someone like me, who of course wants to figure out the underlying algorithms.
What would make this a feature I would actually use, instead of just play around with out of curiousity, is this: if, every 8 or 10 songs, iTunes didn't play something from my collection, but inserted a song from the iTunes store that the genius algorithms indicated I might like. This would then truly replicate what is like back in the day when I listened to KOME, KSJO or KOME, where the comfortingly familiar would be combined with the thrill of the new.
It goes without saying, of course, that if you skipped the new song iTunes would learn from that, and if you liked it there would be a convenient (but not spammy) way to buy it.
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