Playlist Creation

[Yuiichi]

Ideas like the Unrated playlist are really cool - I'm going to try setting up some new Smart Playlists tonight.

Just an off topic question: do you guys rate your music, or just let it sit unrated? Also, how do you rate them (in iTunes, on your iPod, etc)?

[philbowell]

Yuiichi, my tracks are all rated. I do it in iTunes, whenever something new is added I tend to give them a generic 3 stars, and the as I listen to the album tweak the ratings up and down to suit. Some of my playlists are dependant on my ratings, for example one is set to contain songs that I have not listened to in the last 3 months but are rated over 3 stars.

[weldon]

I don't rate songs until I've heard them a few times. I like to let stuff grow on me first. What I do is I have a smart playlist called "unrated" that has all songs rated less than 1 star. I then sort that list by play count. I go through every now and then and add ratings. I figure when I've heard something 115 times (the actual leader today), then I should rate it.

Of course a lot of the unrated songs with high playcounts are on my wife's workout playlist, and I actually don't listen to them that much myself which skews the results.

[trmcculloch]

I've tried to start rating things but I never get round to it. Only a small fraction has been done so far, generally when I'm bored on the train.
I recently set up QS hotkeys to make it a bit easier

[Yuiichi]

QS hotkeys would make it a lot easier. I started to do it, but find that it's hard giving a rating sometimes. 5 stars is like the best song ever, and 4 stars is it's close to that, but what if I like it in between there? Haha, maybe I have to listen to that song a lot more.

I've got several playlists going now - my Unplayed Parade, Unrated, and am working on a Workout Playlist. The only trouble I'm having with the workout playlist is the fact that I don't have any music that I really like to work out too. Boo.

[mdmunoz]

Originally Posted by Yuiichi

QS hotkeys would make it a lot easier. I started to do it, but find that it's hard giving a rating sometimes. 5 stars is like the best song ever, and 4 stars is it's close to that, but what if I like it in between there? Haha, maybe I have to listen to that song a lot more.

I use ratings as a tool for making party shuffle better. I think of it this way: three is the average, and anything I want played more or less often gets a higher or lower rating, respectively.

[Jugger Grimrodd]

I think that the "My Top Rated" playlist picks up 4 and 5 stars. I would assume that the "Play Higher Rated Songs More Often" would use the same standard.

I haven't rated anything - ever - before. I would imagine that my ratings would look like this:

Anything that I want to hear is rated with 4 stars. I guess that would make 4 stars average for me. So really, my entire library would be populated with 3 and 4 star rated songs. I need to figure out something (Nothing worse than pulling a christmas song in July...). The prospect of rating all of my music makes me feel a little queezy.

As an aside, I love the Autofill feature with the iShuffle. Why don't they offer that functionality for all iPods? I know, you can make it yourself, but why should you have to?

I have so much music and I lack the ability (it seems) to assign static ratings for my music. I am a music mood person. iTunes could be so much more intuitive.

It would be really cool if Apple built some sort of external rating system. I would love for someone else to rate my music for me. For example, the record companies release singles from albums, why can't that be reflected in the tag info. You could switch into "Radio Station" mode and hear only the tracks that received radio play. I would love that.

I would switch to full on random mode for when I was feeling more adventurous.