Comments on: iTunes Library Preening

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 21:45:52 +0000

What about unrated tracks? Or do you obsessively rate everything?

By: alastair

alastair — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 21:45:52 +0000

Unrated tracks are ignored, hence “% of rated” and “cumulative % of rated”.

By: Eddie

Eddie — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 21:45:52 +0000

It’s interesting to see someone think about iTunes track rating the way I do. I haven’t found a good method yet (mine matches what you orginally had plus or minus).

The problem I have is that I have tracks that I would consider 5 star, but not for the particular circumstances.. ie- the gym, vs. sleeping. I see you give those a 4. But then I get (as you have) very few 5 stars that I would listen to any time, anywhere.

That’s pretty much why I stopped obsessively rating them- I now have complex smart playlists. So complex, that I would welcome the addition of regular expressions to further granulate

By: james

james — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 21:45:52 +0000

Honestly, it doesn't make any sense to me that one star be the rating for dislike. To me, if I don't like something enough to give it a negative rating it is most likely not in music library to begin with. Therefor, it makes more sense to me to use the 5 star rating system as a way of indicating increasing level of satisfaction with the song. One star being this song is a cut above the great majority which I am indiffernt to and there for get no ranking at all. Two through four stars are simply increasingly preferred songs, with five stars being my most prefered songs.

My concern/confussion is in how iTunes actually makes this distinction in how it calculates shuffle play. Does iTunes play songs ranked with one star more often than songs with no stars?

By: alastair

alastair — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 21:45:52 +0000

Eddie, the underrated “grouping” field is great for this kind of task. The 1-5 star rating doesn’t have a lot of resolution for saying “well I love this track except that it really is too rockin’ to play when I’m brushing my teeth in the morning, except if I’ve just been for a run beforehand, and …” So IMHO you’re better off just using the rating to say how much you like the track. Categorising it to certain situations is the job of playlists (smart or dumb).

By: alastair

alastair — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 21:45:52 +0000

James:

Well perhaps I should point out that I have a 60GB iPod so I have plenty of space for the one star tracks...

Let me use an example which you might be familiar with: Radiohead's "OK Computer" album. Fantastic album. For whatever reason I resisted its charms, but now I'm totally into it. Now a lot of people (not including me BTW) dislike the track called "Fitter Happier". You might know the one, it has a robot voice reciting self-improvement goals. Some people don't like it and skip the track reflexively when it comes on.

So this hypothetical person (again not me, I quite like the track although it's by no means the best) might rate this as one star to indicate that they don't really like it. They could instead just delete the song entirely from the library, but this leaves something of a gap in the album. I don't know about you, but I have a bit of an all-or-nothing approach, so I would prefer to keep the track but mark it as not a desirable candidate for shuffle play. If I wanted to skip the track during normal (sequential) play, I would probably create a smart playlist that excluded the one star tracks, or even a regular playlist with that track excluded.

iTunes calculation of shuffle play is most certainly a mystery. Particularly in version 5.0+ where they introduced the "smart shuffle" feature. It is a mystery that will remain unsolved (by me).

By: james

james — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 21:45:52 +0000

alastair, Good point and well taken. I too am reluctant to break apart album, although couldn’t the check marks have the same effect? I believe you can you not uncheck songs that you want not to be generally played while still keeping them in the library. There is an option when making smart playlists to only include checked songs. I think maybe I have a mental deficiency when it comes to star rating systems. If I knew how the iTunes shuffle worked I could be more comfortable with a ratings system any which way.