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I’m in love with iTunes 8′s new Genius feature. For those who don’t obsessively follow gadgety news, it basically does two things: it suggests songs for purchase from the iTunes Store that are similar to any song that you select in your music library, and it can also instantly create a playlist of up to 100 songs that all go together from any song in your library.

The first thing, I’m not so excited about. I don’t buy much music off of iTunes, because I’m one of those crazy old-school guys who actually needs to hold a CD in my hands before I feel like I own the album. I also have hair growing out of my ears and frequently shout at kids to get off of my lawn.

Also, there’s still a maddening number of songs in the iTunes store that have copy protection attached to them, or are only available at a lower sound quality, which sounds tinny and flat to my ears. And ultimately, there are plenty of other places on the internet that I can *ahem* “borrow” music from, if I’m just checking something out before deciding whether or not to buy the CD, or if I’m looking for something that’s out of print and unavailable for purchase from the copyright holder.

So the Genius iTunes Store recommendations are great for discovering other rarities by the same artist that I don’t already own, or for finding similar artists that I might be interested. But the real genius of Genius, as far as I’m concerned, is the Genius playlist maker.

When you first install iTunes 8, you have the option to have Genius scan your entire music library, which can take a little while, but it’s a one-time-only thing. Genius takes all of that information and sends it to Apple. (The iTunes 8 EULA swears up and down that no personally identifiable information is sent, but I’m sure that Apple now knows pretty much everything about me. But the joke’s on them: I’m not actually very interesting, and I rarely buy anything from their store.)

Apple does something with all of that info that they won’t talk about, and then it sends a bunch of information back to your iTunes library. Click on a song, click the Genius button, and BAM! You instantly have a playlist of songs. And when I say “instantly,” I mean it. It takes less than a second. You can choose how many songs to have in the playlist, you can instantly refresh it with all-new songs, and you can save the playlist for later.

And it’s just about as smart as the name implies. Selecting “How Soon Is Now” by the Smiths makes a playlist that includes Echo & The Bunnymen, New Order, The Cure, Morrissey, and newer stuff like Muse and The Arcade Fire. Bruce Springsteen’s “Downbound Train” leads to a playlist full of downtempo stuff by R.E.M., Neil Young, The Police, Warren Zevon, and The Kinks.

The one that impressed me the most was a playlist I created from Metallica’s “Orion,” off of their 1986 Master of Puppetsalbum. Genius was smart enough to put on songs by Megadeth, Iron Maiden, Pantera, and Anthrax, as well as more Metallica songs. But after ten refreshes, it only gave me one song off of their Black Album, and it never included any songs off of their post-Black Album stuff. It was smart enough to include live versions of old songs recorded and released after the Black Album, but not a single tune from Load, Reload, or The Album Whose Name Shall Never Be Mentioned Again appeared in any of the lists.

How does it work? I have no idea. I think it has something to do with how many other Genius users have the same songs in playlists of their own, and which other songs are included in those playlists. There’s probably some iTunes Store marketing data at work as well (“customers who purchased song X also purchased songs Y and Z”), and I’m sure there’s some basic analysis of things like genre, tempo, date of release, and other info that Genius can mine directly from the song and its data tags. They probably also have a room full of music nerds like me, scripting rules like, “A playlist built off of Eric Clapton’s ‘Tears In Heaven’ should never include R.E.M.’s ‘Fall On Me’ or Tom Petty’s ‘Free Fallin”.”

For most people, the Genius playlist will just be a fun novelty, or a quick way to come up with six hours of music for a party or a road trip. But I’m a straight-up High Fidelity music geek who spends WAY too much time making mixes and playlists from a music collection of nearly 25,000 songs (99% of which were purchased legally, which is why I didn’t own a car until I was 27). At a certain point, something like Genius isn’t just a helpful utility, it’s absolutely necessary if you want to continue enjoying the full depth of your collection.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to listen to a playlist based on Mojo Nixon’s “Tie My Pecker to My Leg.” I’d have never thought of mixing Ministry’s “Jesus Built My Hotrod” and the Dead Kennedys’ “Holiday in Cambodia” into it, but now that you mention it…