Despite its corny name, the Effin Genius iPhone app ($1.99) is my kind of iPhone app. It’s Pandora for your iPhone, but rather than creating a radio station of songs you might like based on a band you enter, it creates a custom playlist based on the music in your iPhone — pretty amazing. It does so by analyzing your playlists, notifying you once your library has been successfully uploaded, and then alerting you when your recommendations are ready.
Each playlist is based on a single album in your music library and offers song after song of like-minded bands. Not only are the selections tailored to your taste, but the music they pick is generally pretty diverse. Based on Dinosaur Jr.’s “Farm,” they chose other Dinosaur Jr. songs from different albums, and the Pixies for their similar late ’80s Boston rock sensibility. Other picks were: Dirty Projectors, Passion Pit, Merle Haggard, and the Rolling Stones—certainly these choices run the gamut.
While most playlists were dead-on in picking songs I wanted to hear both by bands I knew and didn’t know, I must admit they were a bit off the mark with the Liz Phair “Exile in Guyville” playlist. They weren’t entirely wrong—there was Portishead’s ‘Roads’ and The Cure’s ‘Pictures of You’—but would the same 15-year-old girl who cried to Liz Phair’s “Shatter” and “Divorce Song” really be psyched to hear Live’s “I Alone” or “Semi-Charmed Life” by Third Eye Blind? I’m thinking no. Overall though, an iPhone app that can find your next new favorite band or suggest to you old classic you might have missed is pretty hard to argue with.
