I use ratings for two purposes:

- To indicate which songs that I want loaded on my player
- To indicate which songs are my favorites

I manually rate my songs using the following scale:

- 5 stars: A favorite
- 3 stars: A song/podcast I want on my player

I also use the "Unknown" rating to indicate which songs have been added to my library. This makes it easy for me to identify new songs so that I can evaluate and then rate them. Songs I want on my player get one of the two above ratings, and songs that I don't want on my player get the 0 star (Bomb) rating.

Doing the above also has a useful side effect in conjunction with autoplaylists. I have an autoplaylist that loads a small selection of zero rated songs on my player for review. This gives me a chance to review some unrated tracks in case there's a hidden gem in my collection, a great song I've overlooked. When I sync the autoplaylist to my player, the rating for its songs are changed to one star. This ensures that once a song has been loaded on my player for review, it won't be loaded again (unless I change its rating to zero stars).

All of my songs have the same rating...unknown. There are two main reasons:
1) I have no taste in music...I love it all. My tastes vary so quickly, and so often, that I wouldn't be able to keep up.
2) I do set the rating to 5 when I am creating CD's to burn. Once they are burned, I set the rating back to unknown

MPG

I have 1 star as neutral, ½ star for tracks I dislike, leaving the bomb for all those tracks which are just horrible. Only songs rated above 3 stars are good enough to listen to "regularly" (lol), leaving those between 1 and 3 stars classified as "interesting" but not necessarily great songs. Though I did find too many rating levels created too much indecision as to where the track should be placed. I've since stuck with full stars only for main tracks, with half stars to differentiate between versions of the same song.

Interesting you have 2.5 as neutral. I tend to have 0.5 as neutral or 'just worth listening to', and delete the rest (or keep them unrated if I have other reasons for keeping them). Heh, MM should allow negative numbers ;)

The whole system of rating music is really mind-boggling. Should ratings be represented from -infinity to infinity, 0 to a finite number or from 0 to infinity? Is there a limit to how good music can get? My latest thoughts on this is that harmony/melody can be rated from -x to +infinity (i.e. it can sound incredible, or otherwise grate easily to a finite degree), but that other aspects of music (like rhythm, structure and maybe timbre) would be rated from 0 (neutral) to infinity.

Almost my entire collection is rated. If nothing else but than the default rating of 2.5 stars.

I have in the past used auto-rating scripts (diddledoo's), since that never worked with mm 3, its been a while since that was used.

Now I simply set the default rating of 2.5 and either rate them customly while I am cleaning up tags, and/or as they are playing.

Ratings are important to me, primarily to keep tracks I don't like, out of my last.fm dj script and other auto-playlists etc.

I take any rating with a grain of salt, they are simply a tool and not the end all be all tag of the music world. They simply help me identify/sort/filter quickly music which I knowingly like, dislike, or neutral about.

[quote="Nebbin"]If I play some of my late '90s club music I seriously cringe in embarrassment and pain - it's often much easier to just live alone.[/quote]
Would that be a subliminal [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dBu5X3TvNw]cringe[/url]? :D

[quote="twinbee"]Well in a sense the piece stays at the same quality, and although it's time which can make a piece more subjectively boring, one can easily make a DJ type script to take into account both rating and playcount/lastTimePlayed to play that piece less often.[/quote]

Since the ratings are subjective anyway, and for these specific tracks I've obviously changed my mind, then for all intents and purposes the piece has also changed it's rated "quality". But as I was in this case referring to Pop music, then it's not unusual. Heck, I find club music even worse though - I swear the stuff practically only has a shelf life of 6 months! If I play some of my late '90s club music I seriously cringe in embarrassment and pain - and wonder what I was thinking :lol:

I don't like any of the auto-rating scripts, as many of my habits don't necessarily reflect my measure of a song... such as skipping (often do it when searching for a particular track or track section for editing), or length of time between playing (with 50k+ tracks I find I don't repeat very often - Many of my all time favourite tracks have only been played once or twice in a year).

Oh, and on the note of keeping other hands off the computer, it's often much easier to just live alone (don't even let them in the front door!) :)

Haha! Good one. :)

I setup my machine in a secure location:

[url=http://lifehacker.com/370732/and-the-winner-is][img]http://cache.lifehacker.com/assets/resources/2008/03/bunker.png[/img][/url]
Credit: [url=http://lifehacker.com/]Lifehacker[/url]

Haha, Nyn. Yeah, that's how mine is, too. :D I have Vista though so fortunately that tends to keep hubs off my machine. He's still on XP. I did decide I had to edit my post though. Hubs does actually like some of my music but it'll be a cold day in hell before he just waltzes in and starts playing something on my rig. He's much more apt to burn a cd for himself to play in the car.

[quote="spacefish"]
No one except me EVER plays my music. Period. Heck, my husband thinks all my tracks are crap anyway. :P[/quote]

Exactly :wink: , I have my 'puter set up to self-destruct if anyone besides me touches it. :lol:

Nyn

[quote="twinbee"]I'm guessing that these kind of autorating scripts check to see whether the tune has been played all the way through to see if you didn't skip it. [/quote]
Yes, there is skip detection, and several formulas in Big Berny's script you can choose from to fit your listening style.

[quote]But as I see it, the problem comes when you're away, or someone else is playing your music (like at a party etc.). Crap tracks will get lifted up this way...[/quote]
No one except me EVER plays my music. Period. Heck, my husband thinks most of my tracks are crap anyway. :P

[quote="spacefish"]Sorry, I answered your poll before I read your post. The nature of polls, I guess.[/quote]
Oh no you've ruined the poll ;) Oh well, I'll let you off this time :)

I'm guessing that these kind of autorating scripts check to see whether the tune has been played all the way through to see if you didn't skip it. But as I see it, the problem comes when you're away, or someone else is playing your music (like at a party etc.). Crap tracks will get lifted up this way...

[quote="Nebbin"]Often I find a song, which I may enjoy when first released, dates very quickly, and if heard again (even 6-12 months later) it subsequently rates very poorly - and unfortunately this makes any rating system almost a joke.[/quote]
Well in a sense the piece stays at the same quality, and although it's time which can make a piece more subjectively boring, one can easily make a DJ type script to take into account both rating and playcount/lastTimePlayed to play that piece less often.

Sorry, I answered your poll before I read your post. The nature of polls, I guess. I do use an auto-rate script and wouldn't think of using anything else. As I'm 44 years old now, much of my taste has changed over the years, and thus so have my ratings. I neither have the will nor the patience to rate every single track by hand only to find out weeks or months later that something I thought was really ace is now just blah. I certainly don't want to constantly [i]RE[/i]rate all my tracks. I'm very glad for Big Berny's AutoRateAccurate which uses a bunch of criteria to rate my tracks. I'm thoroughly satisfied with its functionality now and I've only been using it for about 6 months. From experience, I can only expect that it will be even more [i]accurate [/i]over time, changing ratings with my mood without me having to lift a finger. Love for the lazy. :wink:

[quote="Lowlander"] ... on larger libraries it can become an essential tag.[/quote]

It would be soooo much more useful too, if only I could complete the task lol