Geek & Mild by Sean Sperte

Jun 7th, 2008 How I Rate My Music

Screenshot of iTunes PlaylistsA proper (read as “useful”) method for rating my music — with stars, in iTunes — has eluded me ever since the feature was introduced. Here’s a new method I’m trying; which I couldn’t fit into a 140-character Tweet:

My goal is to rate every song in my library with this system. Unrated songs will be left unchecked, and won’t play in shuffle mode or get transferred to my iPhone. I’m starting by rating entire albums, or at least those I can, confidentially.

Coupled with data iTunes records automatically (e.g. play count, times skipped, etc.), ratings can prove very helpful in fulfilling preference. For instance, finding songs that I love but haven’t played in a while could be as easy as creating a Smart Playlist that matches checked songs that:

That Playlist returned just under 400 great songs I’d either forgotten about, or haven’t listened to in months! I’m rediscovering my music.

Comments

  1. Michael Mistretta 7 June, 2008

    Very nice. I’m gonna try to incorporate that rating system with my iTunes library. As for playlists, I tend to create an All Songs playlist which automatically collects all the songs in my iTunes. Then I base my other music playlists off this one.

    My All Songs:

    http://img.skitch.com/20080607-xxy79sam8p8h349saycd46dp2a.png

    Another one of my favourite playlists—titled “Forgotten Lovers”:

    http://img.skitch.com/20080607-kh6236re6j57xi2kh4is6pmd2p.png

  2. Jamie 7 June, 2008

    I love the Non-DRM’d play list.

  3. erik skoglund 7 June, 2008

    I have my iPod set to autosync to a smart playlist with a criteria of “no 1★,” so anytime I hear something I dislike come up, I quick rate it 1★, and go along my merry way, happy in the awareness that it’ll disappear next time I hook the nano up to the laptop. Other than that, my rating system is pretty similar, although I haven’t gotten much into the play count, skip count, etc. stuff.

  4. Sam Rayner 8 June, 2008

    Rate This Song is a useful Applescript for staring music as you listen without breaking your work flow. If I could bring myself to start rating my library I think I’d use it.

  5. Doug Avery 8 June, 2008

    I have a similar system, but for me, 1 star means “delete.” This way, I can download a bunch of promotional tracks and weed through them during the day by listening to my Unrated smart playlist and rating them up or down.

    I have a generally “not listened to recently” list, but it’s huge, so I think I’ll use your idea of narrowing it down with those criteria….

  6. Patrick 8 June, 2008

    This is a really cool rating system. I should incorporate this into my workflow.

    Thanks for sharing.

  7. Ben Carlson 8 June, 2008

    I usually just delete songs that would otherwise get a 1-star rating. (Well, I keep around full albums, so there may be a song on the album I don’t care for, but it’s part of the album that I like, so worthy of staying.) I’ve filtered a lot of mine by going through and making sure all ID3 tags are correct and have correct album art, so I’ve essentially redone my collection from scratch. Quite the process, and probably only halfway done.

  8. Jeff Byrnes 8 June, 2008

    Quite interesting, I’ve actually been following a system almost identical to this for years now. I’ve never seen the point in keeping anything you don’t like, excepting for reasons of completeness or something else determined on a per-song basis (my 1 ★ items are rated in the same fashion as yours, Sean), so the other 4 stars indicate some level of appreciation, again, very similar to yours.

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