your own rating standards?

[pagoodle]

I was wondering if anyone has their own standards for rating songs.
ex. 1 star = i hate this song
2 stars = bearable
3 stars = ok, not favourite etc...
I like to give the 5 star rating only if it's an amazing song, if I love the lyrics and the melody... So I am just interesting if anyone has a system for rating their songs.

[Kiros]

What I do is rate songs like listed below, if the average rating of an album is below 3.00, I delete it, hence why I keep some 1 and 2 star songs (I only want full albums) Albums with a rating higher than 3.5 I buy.

1. This song shouldn't be on the album, it drags it down.
2. This song is not really good.
3. Good song, worth keeping
4. Great song
5. One of my absolute favourites

Muse - Origin of Symmetry, for example, has an average rating of 4.4. :)

[nihal310]

Yeah mine is pretty much the same as Kiros...haha I'm so picky about ratings that I have a separate smart playlist for 'Unrated Tracks' on my 'Pod, so I can listen and rate them...and that's coz only recently did I begin to take rating seriously

[Galley]

1 - songs that need the tags updated
2 - songs I don't care to listen to within smart playlists. If I never wanna hear it, I uncheck it.
3 - album tracks
4 - singles or very good album tracks
5 - songs I just can't get enough of. :D

[bdb]

I haven't really used the rating system, but I've thought about using it for something really different. Since some of the many missing features are the ability to edit playlists or delete songs, I was thinking of using the stars to indicate something I need to do.

Example:
5. I need to add this to an existing playlist
4. This is in a playlist but I want to remove it
1. I need to delete this

haven't figured out what to do with the others

Would this work?

[Code Monkey]

Ratings are an integral part of my smartlist system (http://filebox.vt.edu/users/channum/files/smarlist_management.doc). Unrated = Unrated: I'll get around to it eventually
* - Crap: don't care if I ever hear it again & if space gets low it's getting deleted off my music drive
** - Not suitable for shuffling: interludes, intros, outros, etc. for whole albums
*** - Decent enough: these are songs that I like to hear every now and again
**** - Really good music but not great
***** - Great music

[jedk]

I don't use ratings...

[Pluto]

I don't rate either.

If it's in iTunes/on my iPod, then I like it already ;)

[Superpete]

Kiros! Muse - Origin of Symmetry should have a higher rating than that! how about 5. or 5 and and half. or seventeen. sorry, im a muse addict...

[iPodHawk]

Unrated - haven't gotten around to it yet.
* - Very poor songs. These may be weak album tracks kept for completeness, or singles that have been kept for a theme playlist that I would not keep otherwise.
** - Mediocre songs that are largely kept to increase the diversity of my collection.
*** - Good but not outstanding songs. This is the most common rating I have used.
**** - Very good, but not great songs.
***** - The cream of the crop.


I'd imagine that I'm like many other people in that my ratings can vary by the mood that I'm in at the moment. Some days I'm more generous, and on other days I'm very critical. Therefore, I do find myself updating ratings some over time, although not usually by more than a single star up or down.

I have only rated my rock/pop songs. I also have some jazz, classical, holiday, and comedy tracks in my library that I have not rated. For those items, I play each album seperately and sequentially, so I don't need to use ratings for playlist functionality as I do with rock/pop music.

At the moment, I still have some room left on my hard drive and iPod. When I get to the point that space is an issue, I will assess what songs to remove from the library, and naturally the one-star songs will be the pool of songs to review for inclusion or exclusion.

[Kiros]

Originally posted by Superpete
Kiros! Muse - Origin of Symmetry should have a higher rating than that! how about 5. or 5 and and half. or seventeen. sorry, im a muse addict...

I've got all their albums and all their singles.
I'm quite strict with ratings, 4.4 is very high for an average rating, all the songs on the album have 4 or 5 stars. :D

Originally posted by nihal310
I have a separate smart playlist for 'Unrated Tracks' on my 'Pod, so I can listen and rate them...

That's what I do too. :) Only 800 songs to go. :S

[EvilDude]

I use 1 to say delete this song ;)

2 and 3 for some reason, I dont even use!

4 is a good song, one that i might not know, or think isnt really really good
and 5 is really all my favs, and theres a LOT of them, all the sogns i think are great.

[perfmode]

* = WTF is this crap. never wanna hear it again
** = meh. this song sucks but other ppl like it.
*** = average album song... not good enough for a smartlist
**** = i like this song. good enough for a greatest hits or smartlist
***** = i love this song. it's perfect in every way and never gets old.

[jerrodh]

Those of you who don't rate should seriously consider it. It works *wonders* in smart playlists.

Here's my rating system:

* - Update these tags, or delete this song. (This way, I can signal myself in iTunes from the iPod itself, on the go... since ratings synchronize both ways!)
** - Eh... I really don't care for this song too much, but I'd still like to keep it for rare/occasional listening.
*** - The "average song"... it's ok, but not worth much special treatment.
**** - A truly good song. I enjoy this, and would like to listen to it more than the other songs.
***** - Wow. I love this song, always have, and likely always will. The "cream of the crop."

...and what this enables me to do... My (notable) Smart Playlists:

"Fix or Delete" - All songs containing exactly 1 star. After I fix the tag as required, I rate it according to the other 4 levels, and it's automatically gone from the playlist.

"Forgotten Favorites" - Perhaps my favorite playlist. This is a list of 30 of my "5-star" songs, sorted by the "Least Recently Played." As I listen to this playlist, it constantly rolls me through all of my 5-star songs, so I never forget any of them. ;)

There are others that I have that use ratings as a "secondary" condition, but these two are fundamentally based upon rating, and happen to be my two most useful (and used) playlists.

[honeybee1236]

My rating system for my jazz songs is:
1 star - delete
2 stars - maintenance (song is messed up in some way)
3 stars - quiet jazz (songs like 'Quiet Storm' by Smokey Robinson)
4 stars - smooth jazz (mid tempo songs like)
5 stars - jamming jams (up tempo songs)

For my non-jazz songs:
3 stars - like a little
4 stars - like a lot
5 stars - love'n it

[Kirk]

1 star - These songs are not worth keeping, but I won't delete them. I'll keep them around so that if somebody recommends one of these to me again I won't have to rediscover that I hate it.
2 stars - These songs rate a 'meh'. I'll skip past these songs every time. They won't appear on any of my playlists.
3 stars - These are average songs. They're good enough to appear on my playlists but I might skip them in some instances.
4 stars - I like these songs and will usually listen to them all the way through.
5 stars - I love these songs and can enjoy having them repeated frequently.

[iPodHawk]

Originally posted by Kirk
1 star - These songs are not worth keeping, but I won't delete them. I'll keep them around so that if somebody recommends one of these to me again I won't have to rediscover that I hate it.

This is a good one, Kirk. It really sucks to have someone recommend a song that you forgot you've already tried and hated, so you spend time and effort just to rediscover how bad it really was. On the other hand, sometimes a friend can help point out something that you missed, so having the song at hand can help in a quick re-evaluation.

[Burnt]

Here's a wonderfully sad discussion :) Do you have a system for you ratings... Personally, I do - if I'm asked why I've rated most of the tracks on my iTunes, I tell people it helps when constucting playlists, or some such rubbish... The truth is, I just like playing with every single last aspect of my iPod... :D

This is my system, I'd be interested to hear any other views...

1 - Poor: Most tracks with one star should be deleted; I only keep them on to make my collection look bigger...

2 - Average: Worth listening to, once in a while, when you're not feeling too fussy, just so long as you don't have to pay attention to the world.

3 - Good: MOR, nice, safe tracks - no musical boundaries pushed here and nothing you'd turn off if Shuffle threw it at you... Hearing one track on a various album that scores three would make you buy the album it came from... unless you can download, but we wouldn't do that, would we? ;-)

4 - Excellent: The stand-out tracks, the ones you skip others just to make sure you hear them before you get to work/home or the battery dies on you...

5 - Genius: Those special tunes that make your hair stand on end; the song that makes you go cold; the anthem that makes you run through concrete wall: "Teenage Kicks", "Another Lost Summer", "Street Spirit"... Only a very, very, very small proportion of your iTunes should have the highly coverted five stars...

[narkerbyt]

Originally posted by Kiros
What I do is rate songs like listed below, if the average rating of an album is below 3.00, I delete it, hence why I keep some 1 and 2 star songs (I only want full albums) Albums with a rating higher than 3.5 I buy.

1. This song shouldn't be on the album, it drags it down.
2. This song is not really good.
3. Good song, worth keeping
4. Great song
5. One of my absolute favourites

Muse - Origin of Symmetry, for example, has an average rating of 4.4. :)

how do you know the average ranking of an album?

[CrzyCanuck72]

0 stars - poor quality - needs to be redownloaded
1 star - tags need to be updated
2 stars - bad song
3 stars - the rating every song gets when it's just been added to my library. A decent song, but not one I'd hesitate to skip over.
4 stars - a great song, one I could listen to over and over
5 stars - an all-time favourite song. I'll listen to it any time, anywhere.

[jimmeh]

i used to have *** has 'average' but then i discovered i had way to many (about 2000 i think) 'above average' songs- i now use this (i'll follow other people who've replied to this thread and give examples of muse songs):

*- total crap....basically, intro's, interludes and no good songs- i.e. things like the intro to absolution (muse)
**- average- either i haven't rated it yet (i rate everything as a 2 at first) or i just don't think its 'above average', e.g. showbiz- muse
***- a good song, but not great- for example ruled by secrecy (muse...)
****- a truly great song, just not good enough to merit 5 (i save that for what i consider to be true classics- i have just 60 5 star songs)...like stockholm syndrome

*****- this is something that i NEED to have in my life lol, one of my favourite songs ever- i have 5 ***** muse songs on my iPod- butterflies & hurricanes, citizen erased (+ live from hullabaloo), time is running out and unintended

about the average rating...how?? or did you just work it out?

[ADHDKing89]

I don't use ratings, I often get music that my brother has rated and unrate it once it's on my iPod.
Why?
I honestly don't know.

[sherpahigh]

Originally posted by Code Monkey
Ratings are an integral part of my smartlist system (http://filebox.vt.edu/users/channum/files/smarlist_management.doc). Unrated = Unrated: I'll get around to it eventually
* - Crap: don't care if I ever hear it again & if space gets low it's getting deleted off my music drive
** - Not suitable for shuffling: interludes, intros, outros, etc. for whole albums
*** - Decent enough: these are songs that I like to hear every now and again
**** - Really good music but not great
***** - Great music

This is a fantastic system, esspecially the smartlist system. Just what I was looking for.

Thanks for posting it.