Do you use your software player's rating system?

I am curious whether forum members who use some kind of software player also use its rating system, if it has one.

I use iTunes for playback, which provides the ability to associate a 1-5 star rating with an individual track, and separately with an individual whole album. Apple recently added a new rating system alongside the old, confined to just "Like" or "Dislike", and not-so-gently nudged users towards it by removing the 1-5 star rating system from their mobile app players (thanks for that, Tim).

I have been haphazardly rating tracks 1-5 stars for a while, as I listen to them and form a definite opinion of their merit. I haven't used the album rating feature. Supposedly, Apple's Genius playlists feature takes ratings into account when it generates suggestions, but I can't find any definitive statement that it really does so, and I never use Genius anyway.

To help achieve consistency, I thought about what each number of stars in a rating should mean.

0 - not yet rated, for whatever reason
1 - an awful track, to be avoided
2 - a mediocre track, I can take or leave
3 - a good track, that I enjoy hearing
4 - a great track, that I love hearing
5 - one of the best tracks ever, a genuine classic

I analysed my collection to see how many tracks have which rating, and of those tracks I have rated (a measly 7,977 out of 39,959) the breakdown is this:-

Code:

*****   5.0%
 ****  24.6%
  ***  33.0%
   **  32.6%
    *   4.8%

What do other members do? Does a anyone else bother to rate their tracks, or is it just a waste of time? Does anyone use ratings to help them decide what to play next? And is there anyone out there who doesn't use a software player but uses a rating system of their own devising anyway?

 

I have never bothered to rate any tracks in my library for myself. My mood changes daily anyway and something I do not like today could end in in heavy rotation a few months from now. It has happened.

 

I did this when I started collecting MP3s a decade ago (usually 5 stars) and stopped doing it not long after.
That's just nonsense if the music is there only for yourself. And my taste/mood about music is changing everytime.

 

Never bothered, and also never liked the fact that it was tied to the software database so if you ever needed to import your files from scratch creating a new database file or switch software platforms say iTunes to JRiver you'd loose your star ratings.

 

1. I use JRiver which has similar features by default but I have deleted the info and removed the "ratings" from the display view. I find it a waste of time and space because I do not care how others rate something which, for me, is very personal.
2. Of course not. I choose based on my current, if transient, interests and whims. I also read music reviews.
3. Not I.
N.B.: I do not participate in most social media, I do not entertain requests for "friends" or "pals" on the web forums I use nor do I have any interests in "likes." They are excuses for real communication.

 

++++1 for Kal Rubinson

Nobody cares about rating music, it's all subjective and personal. It wastes time when you should be listening.

 

Does foobar2000 even have a rating system?

 

I'm not sure why the subjective and personal character of song ratings is being highlighted, as if anyone was denying this, or as if that makes ratings any less useful. One of the ways I find them useful is that I have playlists of songs by particular categories, e.g. Prog Rock, or San Franciscans. I can then make other playlists that are "Best of Prog Rock" or "Best of SF", by creating a Smart Playlist that draws from these categorized playlists but only includes tracks with at least a 3 star rating. Makes it easy to put on a bunch of songs at a party or whatever...

 

I never use a ratings system when I tag my files. You can't rate music you like. Either you like something or you don't. I don't need a rating to remind myself if I like something.

 

I do. I like it very much. I have everything rated. I added the star rating system with Quicktagger to Foobar2000.

It's a good representation of music appreciation and the overall quality of the album.

I don't understand why would you say that your tastes/moods affect your appreciation of music... well, yes, they can affect that, but not in a drastic way. And you have to be objective (in your subjectivity at least ). Maybe your discernment of a particular song feels a little off right now, but with a rating system, you can notice that you had rated that particular song with 5 stars in the past, so you shouldn't dismiss it too easily.

They are also useful if you want to make a "mixtape" of the best songs from a musician or genre.

I use Quicktagger.

 

Clearly, we all rate music, all the time. We rate it when we decide whether we like an album or band, or not. We rate it with our wallets. 90% of the threads in this forum concern how this or that music is rated. I like Led Zeppelin. I rate them higher than I do Justin Bieber. I rate "Whole Lotta Love" higher than I do "Hats Off to (Roy) Harper". There is nothing controversial or impossible about rating music. Some people make a living doing so.

 

I use the ratings from time to time. Not sure how much influence it has, but I will say that ITunes, Tidal and Roon all do an excellent job with the playlists/radio stations they create for me. I am not sure if the ratings influence the curator bot but it certainly can't hurt.

 

I don't display or generate ratings, either, for the reasons others have mentioned. If I think a disc is really terrible, I delete it from my library. If it's really great, I shop for more by the same artist. What I do like to display is the play count, which can alert me to things I haven't heard in a while. It takes very little screen space.

 

Too much work for displaying something I already know IMHO. Perhaps a better index would be to display the play and skip count, which is trivial to do with J River and is maintained automatically, or add when was the last time you heard this music.

Anyway, I don't use any of this because when I sit down to listen I do it for pleasure and relaxation and find that somehow I always select things automatically that match my mood and needs. No number crunching or rating involved - call it magic or intuition, but it works very well for me.

 

Never bothered to do it or given it much thought. Formally rating the music on my playback software seems like a like a waste of time to me.

 

Which is something I have no need of.

 

In over a decade of doing computer as source I have never entered a rating for any track or album. Star ratings for tracks and albums is not a feature that I need or desire or have a use for. I know some people make a lot of use of the ratings and play counts to help organize and manage their music. But I'm not one of them. Filling in the ratings would be a lot of busy work with no benefit to me.

 

Why would I want to rate the music I bought? If I rate anything at a 2 or a 1, I'd have to ask myself why the F*&^ I paid for it.

 

Also, recently, I listened to an album that disappointed me but still had 4 excellent songs in it. Without a rating system, there's no way I would remember that album having 4 great songs hidden in it (or many other albums or compilations).

 

Don't frequently do it now. If I liked it I've bought it. Was quite dilligent 15 years ago, and to be honest there are tracks I can't believe I gave five stars to then.

Closest is Spotify playlists. "Albums to try"; "to buy"; "to put on Xmas wish list" etc

 

I think that Digital listening has really changed the way most of us listen. Before we would listen to an album all the way through not pick and choose the cuts, you would get an appreciation of an album concept as a whole not just the song. And probably that album concept would influence our next choice in listening. I personally listen to almost all albums from first song til the last, so I don't need a rating system other than the one in my head.

Keep 'em spinning
Bill

 

I agree with everyone who has said they don't need a rating or suggestion system to know what to put on next. I am the same - when I am playing tracks just for myself. Where I have found ratings or suggestions useful is when I want to put on music at some kind of social event that others will be listening to, and I don't want to be antisocial and play DJ all night instead of mingling. It's tempting to put on a whole album, sure, but my family and friends do not share much of my taste in music, so a whole album may not be appreciated - perhaps better to mix it up a little and hope if they don't like this track or that artist the next might be more agreeable. In this circumstance, an algorithm choosing what to play can be helpful, and I figure that if it is guided by my ratings, at least there is a better chance I will enjoy what it selects even if no one else does

 

More than that. It is emblemmatic of our society's obsession of ranking everything in the presumption that there is a hierarchy in every facet of life.

 

Every once in a while I'll click the stars on my phone when using it as remote. Not sure why I do it though.

 

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