Q: Genius not available for songs

I too have tried everything to get Genius working again without any success. Help from Apple has been useless.  I have told them that I will not be buying any more music from them until this matter is properly sorted out.  If we all did likewise it might have some effect.

Genius is currently unavailable for the following artists in my library:
AC/DC

Alanis Morissette

The B-52's

Bush

Coldplay

Daughtry

Devo

The Dirty Heads

Elvis Presley

The Fray

Goo Goo Dolls

Jane's Addiction

Justin Bieber

Justin Timberlake

Kanye West
Katy Perry

Kelly Clarkson

The Miller Stain Limit

Mindless Self Indulgence

Pennywise

Poison

The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus

Silversun Pickups

The Smashing Pumpkins

The Strokes

My genius works sproadically.  I've tried all the fixes suggested on the various threads.  No luck. 

Several of the songs I've tried are very mainstream - no luck, some work.

How it came into my collection doesn't seem to matter much - nor when it was added.

Genius is apparently not so genius.

I will report it as suggested.  http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunesapp.html

Same issue here. I have playlists that were created by Genius, that now will no longer update - because the main song is no longer recognized by Genius! What the heck?!?

Figured I'd just add to the chorus rather than starting a new thread.  Genius has become extremely finicky since I updated to iTunes 11.  There seems to be no rhyme or reason to what songs it will work with and what it will not; some songs that USED to work no longer do, some songs that work one day won't work after an update, the playlists seem to be selecting from an EXTREMELY limited pool of the music in my library, and there seems to be no corellation between age of the track in my library & working or not. 

This is driving me nuts; I work in an environment where I need to have music on constantly but don't have much time to futz around with creating playlists, so genius has been a lifesaver.  Has anyone had any sort of real response from apple, or found any method to get things working again?

I have email notifications on for this thread and have not seen anything from Apple or any concrete solution. Genius just seems to be very tempermental...

Also having the same problem after a recent systems crash.  I did have a backup of my music, but when I got back up and running and reloaded my music library, Genius will no longer create playlists.  I have tried turning Genius off and on without any success.

August 30, 2013. Same problem, restarting Genius does not fix. Really Apple? no reply?

I recently tried to refresh a Genius playlist.

It told me it could't create a list for that song .... even though it already had.  Sigh.

Reported it again via http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunesapp.html

I will add a ditto on this and 6 more for the friend I spent a week with on vacation. Also CJ, Craig, Jen, and Tina at work with the same problem. Songs that used to create lists no longer work and so few songs actually work any more that Genuis is now a worthless non-functional feature!  Are you listening Apple support? (Yes a cross post, but hopefully to a  more active thread.)

All the songs of Jeremy Banana's in my library also have this error. So clearly it's not user-specific. I'm discovering many, many other artists whose songs cannot be used for Genius playlists. This is really poor.

The extremely odd thing is that I HAVE been able to create a Genius playlist for AC/DC on my linked iPhone! So, same songs, same account, different behavior. But just to stay infuriating, synchronizing the iPhone does not result in that playlist being transferred back to my main iTunes library.

This is Microsoft-level incompetence.

I've all but given up on Genius, which is sad because I loved it. If Apple is trying to discontinue this service, then they need to take it off iTunes so we don't have expectations. And Apple's refusal to provide any feedback is arrogant. It may be time to find alternatives.

So my woe with this.

I don't often need to call Apple, but probably a handful of times in ten years, but this has really irritated me. Genius used to work great. Now it doesn't. In my case it works as it always did for anything more than two years old, whether it came from CD or has been an iTunes purchase. After that, it is hit and miss, and anything from the past year it doesn't do. I made a call to Apple support a fortnight ago, and after we had turned the Genius on and off, de-authorised and re-authorised, they suggested reinstalling iTunes, and Genius then worked. It generated a playlist from a song from the AM by the Arctic Monkeys. I didn't try any others.

Now I came to generate another playlist today, and it doesn't work again. Except, get this, it does work for the specific song, and only that song from the AM album.

I then spent 2 hours on the phone to Apple Techs was escalated, twice, and diagnostics have now gone off. We tried it on different Macs, different users, same results. Tech said it must be either a bug in iTunes, or a server-side bug at Apple.

I get a report back in four days - so I will post if it is of any use. Really frustrating. If anyone has the solution to this please post it!

Same problem here. Apple support doesn't seem to care about it at all. Genius was such a cool feature but in the current state it is useless.

Ok so we're now into 2014 and the issue remains the same. I have tried switching of genius and turning it back on again and all the other reccommendations but still no joy for songs purchased from iTunes..........I'd understand it if it was albums that weren't purchased. Songs that haven't had enough plays? I don't think so.

I hope someone finds a solution soon as I'm starting to see the downside of my decision to choose apple.