Can't use genius with iTunes Match?

I found a work-around - just turn off Match on the iPhone. Genius comes back (in a minute or two). And then when you want Match, just turn it on again. Not so bad after all. When you turn Match back on a message claims it will replace your library, but I think it only checks your library.

Found the same work around which works with iTunes both on the phone and computer. However, a subscription service like Match (which is a terrific idea) shouldn't disable one of the more useful functions on iTunes. I assume this is some sort of technical problem which hasn't been worked out yet as it makes absolutely no sense. I can only hope that Apple will fix this soon.

I agree completely. This is something Apple must fix. I use Genius Mixes all the time. It seems crazy to have access to them on the Mac but not iOS devices. If the experience is to be seamless, between devices, they must have this capibility in Match.

Another workaround: Download the free Moodagent app for your iPhone. It will create saveable playlists based either on a particular song or "mood." I had deleted Moodagent a while back, but with Genius matching not available, this works great. Hopefully, Genius will come to iMatch. In the meantime, as long as you show all your music on your phone, it seems as though Moodagent will search it, even if it's in iCloud.

This doesn't make any sense at all, since genius *does* still continue to work on all the computers that music match turned on. The only quirk is that it makes you update your genius data if you try to build a list with a song you just downloaded from the cloud, but I suppose that's reasonable.

Based on the amount of negative feedback Apple is getting, I suspect they'll address this very soon.

Actually, while I still want genius back on my iPhone, the fact that I can make playlists (genius or otherwise) on my computer and now they instantly and magically appear on my phone is very nice. It also proves that there's nothing fundamental preventing genius from working directly on the phone.

I suspect that a bug was discovered late in testing and they disabled the feature entirely rather than delay release.

This is actually the best workaround for Genius disappearing on iOS that I have found: Create a Genius Mix on your MacBook iTunes, save the playlist, and the playlist pushes out to iOS.

Yup, had the same problem as everyone else but this worked for me after trying it out.

Im glad i dont have to carry "all" my songs and can access the ones i dont usually listen to from the cloud.

Cheers.

I like the suggestion though I remain hopeful that Apple will fix iTunes on the phone--the real beauty was being able to spontaneously create a new playlist while on the road.

With regards to using genius on the computer I've noticed a new symptom of this problem. Genius suggestions for old music on my computer still working, but new downloads not bringing up genius suggestions even after updating genius multiple times. It seems like the whole system is on hiatus.

Baddog 13 wrote:

With regards to using genius on the computer I've noticed a new symptom of this problem. Genius suggestions for old music on my computer still working, but new downloads not bringing up genius suggestions even after updating genius multiple times. It seems like the whole system is on hiatus.

1. I'm noticing the same with newer songs. I downloaded 5 or 6 tracks that are in high rotation on Sirius AltNation -- so not exactly obscure stuff -- and none of them will generate a Genius Mix even after an update. I think there's definitely some major chucking going on with Genius and iTunes Match.

2. If a track downloads to your iOS device and stays after you play it, the space on the device devoted to music will gradually get bigger and bigger. Apple needs to add a default storage size and start kicking off the least most recently played tracks when you hit the limit.

I had experimented with turning iTunes Match on on my phone. However since I don't subscribe to it the On setting would not stay on, in a few seconds it toggled back to off. But apparently when I did that I accidentally disabled the Genius function. However I found another work around. Select a song to play when it starts press the Home button to go back to the home screen. Then double click the Home button to bring up the recent apps and hold the Music icon till the "x" comes up to close it out. The music will stop but if you launch the Music app again the Genius icon will be back in your Playlists screen.

One thing I noticed is that a song that would create a genius playlist on one computer would not work on another computer. I realized after reading this list that if you click on the cloud icon and download that one song to the local computer...then genius will work with that as the "seed" song. This applies only to computers, not iPhone. Thought that might help others who run into the same problem I was having.

As it stands, this is an annoying development, but I can understand that it is a necessary one.

Consider the amount of computing power that your iPhone has and consider the power required to scan through 25k songs to develop a personalized list of tracks. With iTunes match on, your iPhone 'believes' all the tracks showing in iTunes are local so to attempt a Genius list would substantially affect the 'user experience' (see Apple's reason for excluding Flash in iOS) in the shape of slow downs and possibly crashes.

Your home computer has tons of juice to handle this kind of process, so I can see why they have limited Genius use to your computer-based iTunes application. The beauty is, that it still works just fine in iTunes and that is where we can make our lists to be published to our phones.

Many people are complaining "FIX THIS". I would hazard to assume that the software developers have done this for a reason. You, as the customer, are entitled to request features, but seriously, what entitles you to demand so rudely "FIX THIS".

Perhaps the iPhone 5 will have the power for this type of action, or perhaps a workaround could involve the iPhone sending the request to a home computer to create the Genius list. Just my two cents.

For those whining so rudely, I suggest switching back to a Blackberry Bold and see the significant difference in 'user experience'.

Cheers to the developers and the constructive critics.

I don't agree with your assement Chris. 1) unless you are an iOS developer at Apple or an iTunes developer at Apple, please don't speculate on the technical dificulities of the problem. 2) Apple pre-computes "closeness" scores of songs on their servers, not on your phone/computer. That is why when you launch iTunes, it says "Sending/Recieving Genius information to Apple." Your phone isn't trying to read each song to see if it matches another song, all it is doing is looking at the index that apple computed based on your iTunes library. So your iPhone has plenty of processing power to handle this problem. And heck...the iPhone 4s has a better processor than many older macs anyway that can run iTunes and do this...so again, not a valid argument.

I'm not trying to start a flame war, but don't assume you know the reason behind why Apple did something unless you work for them on that problem. I agree, they did this for a reason and I'm waiting for a fix, that is all we can do. It's just annoying when they take away a feature many people used even if they did get us a new feature (iTunes Match). I hope they fix it in iOS 5.1, but all we can do it sit, wait, and hope.

First of all, 25k is not a particularly large number when talking about modern computing resources, and "Tons of juice" is not a processor speed. The iPhone 4 processor is 800 MHz, so even at several hundred processing instructions per title (certainly an exaggeration), the processing time would be negligible. Specifically, that's about half the speed of the piece of junk PC I just replaced, and that had absolutely no problem generating Genious playlists as fast as I could click the key, so unless you have specific information that the iPhone can't handle large playlists, this does not add to the conversation.

Second, if that *does* turn out to be a problem, then I think most people would be happy to have Genius only consider the music that's physically on the device, based on the status bits (iPhones, being machines, do not "believe" anything). I know I would be.

Third, Apple is not a charity. I spent a lot on this thing, so I don't consider voicing my opinion about the features I would like to fall into the category of "whining".