To me, the rating I give a song is mostly defined by the way iTunes treats them. iTunes has a few features for increasing the relative frequency of play based on rating. IMO If the rating system were “pure” it would be divorced from the play frequency modifier. There are songs that I rate very highly that I don’t want to hear very often.

I expect that most savvy iTunes users power-game the rating system for optimized listening frequency rather than respect it as a record of assessed quality.

When I want to rock-out… err… Pop-out I play “My Top Rated” playlist. Much of my iTunes manicure activity during my shuffled-album listening across my whole collection is when I decide to prop up the rating a song that’s “in favour” to four or five stars so that it gets into the top rated list. When I listen to the top rated list, I’m subconsciously listening for tired old songs to drop – which I do by I dropping them down to three stars.

Oh the fickleness of Pop.

There are songs that I rate very highly that I don’t want to hear very often.

Do you need that rating to achieve some purpose other than having rated them, though?

If I understand your question correctly — The initial reason I had for indulging myself with the iTunes’ rating system was vanity. Now I use it primarily for influencing play probability.

When you share your iTunes music collection, other people on the network can see how you’ve rated your music and criticise you. I’m a fragile, lonely, and shy person who secretly yearns for opportunities to laugh in the face of people who say that Mylo’s Need You Tonight is better than Massive Attack’s Unfinished Sympathy and is therefore incorrectly rated in my music collection.

Ratings are a social function or a useful administration hobby for vain people of a particular type, which I may or may not resemble.

My complaint is that iTunes overloads the rating system as a play frequency probablity fudge, when I would like a different option for putting tracks on high rotation.