I use 2-5 to rate my music. 2 would seem like I shouldn’t keep the song, and I wouldn’t if it were standalone, but certain tracks work in a context of an album, and for that reason I will keep them. I also have a playlist of the 2-star songs that I set “skip shuffling” on, so the only time those songs will play is if I’m playing the album straight through.

1 star I use for “marking” a bad file, or a track that’s missing album art, while I’m on the go. When I get home, I’ll check and see. If it’s a tiny glitch, sometimes I take a screenshot at the exact time the glitch occurs so that I can more easily find/fix it later.

I put “Holiday” into my “Grouping” field.

Anyway, just thought I’d throw that out there. Later.

‘My Hit Radio’ is an app that takes this all into consideration….

you get the idea.. basically make up a coding system so you can have a smart list that will weed out any letters or numbers you dont want, you dont need that many.. its just the ones i’ve created as i go along.. you dont need to go through and rate each song at once, when i make a smartlist if stuff i dont want on it shows up then i go and edit the ones i dont want on there, mostly just when you download them or just as you listen do the ones that you really like or don’t like at the moment.. eventually you’ll have a fairly specific setup and you can weed out any catagory easily.. I can make a smartlist in just a couple minutes, most of the time they work out really well, at least better than genius : )

This idea expands to including things like (mellow) (male vocals) (happy) or whatever else. I just wish there was a program that could help juggle the keywords I put in the comments field. Any such programs that have appeared have been quite rough and no longer work with an up-to-date system.

The only workaround I’ve found to date is to create a manual playlist of songs to skip while shuffling and then make a smart playlist of songs not to skip, then periodically select all songs from each playlist and manually select the right “skip when shuffling” setting.

Why is this important? Because that’s the one reliable way I’ve found to keep the Christmas songs from shuffling in with my regular mix.

Thoughts? Ideas? Comments?

I put this “(*****)” in the comments field with as many stars as I’ve rated the song. “(*****)” is 5 stars, “(***)” is 3 stars, etc. I keep the data up-to-date with smart playlists with the criteria such as “My rating is 5 stars, comment does not contain (*****).” Then, if for any reason I need to restore my ratings from the comment field, I can reverse the criteria to “My rating is not 5 stars, comment field contains (*****).” This is helpful for anyone who uses multiple libraries or computers, as well as anyone who’s had their library file corrupted or lost. Plus, your ratings are backed up when you back up your music, so if you lose your hard drive, your backup disks retain your ratings.

An additional bonus is that I can use the comment field to filter my playlists on-the-fly using the search field. If I enter “(***” I get any song rated 3 stars or higher. If I enter “(****)” I get only those songs with 4 star ratings.

It’s not easy to use, but at least it’s only a one-time setup cost – I haven’t had to edit my smart playlists for years, and they still serve me excellently :)

http://gfxmonk.net/?action=irank