Genius on 160GB Classic Plays Wrong Version of Song (Title & Artist Match)

Question

I have noticed a problem with Genius right out of the box with my 160 classic. The problem still exists after the latest software update for the device.
If I select a song and start Genius it will sometimes play another version of that song instead of the selected one. For example I have a song by "Artist A" titled "Song A" on "Album A" it will sometimes play "Artist A", "Song A", from "Album B". I've narrowed it down to it always playing the one that comes from the first, alphabetically, album on which the track occurs. So if the song and artist match but there is a version of the song on "A Album", "B Album", and "C Album" it will always put the "A Album" version in the playlist and never use the "B Album" or "C Album" versions even when they are directly chosen.

Answer 1

Have you reported this problem directly to http://www.apple.com/feedback/ipod.html ? It's possible that they are either unaware of it's existence or that it is the designed behaviour which could perhaps benefit from being clarified in online support.
Given, for example, the general (I presume intentional) inability of the iPod Classic firmware to discriminate between albums of the same title but different album artists, I would guess that the underlying logic for Genius may differ from what you or I might expect or assume at first glance. From your description it would seem that Genius is based on considering which artist/track name pairings fit together, ignoring the album information altogether in this context. As popular tracks are often released on many compilations and anthologies this would seem to have some merit. If Genuis thinks song Y fits well with song X it doesn't really matter which version of song Y it uses (assuming of course they are identical). With this in mind I would venture to suggest that EVERY track Genius selects is from the first album (alphabetcially) you possess that features the given song by the given artist. This aspect is only readily apparent if choose a different version as your initial song where you have multiple instances. If the songs are identical then I don't really see a problem, other than the mild surprise that what you pick isn't what you get, but if you have significantly different versions of the same title and prefer one over the other then I guess the workaround would be to rename the tracks in order to distinguish them. E.g. add the otherwise redundant \[Live\] tag onto the titles of tracks from a live album so these are not selected in error when you try to create a Genius mix based on the studio version of the same track.
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