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[hit_ny]

Was thinking how interesting it was to create a plugin that could show a weighted average of diff track ratings for albums.

formula to do it is

sum (number of tracks X rating( 1..5)) / number of album tracks

multiply this avg value by a factor created by ANDing all album track ratings. This takes care of album tracks that have not been rated as the total value will be zero even if one track is not rated. This can be used to display only albums which have all tracks rated.

Present in a column format, with the ability to sort by clicking column headers.

album - avg rating

To make it interesting, could display in a league format. league A for albums that avg 4 & above, league B for 3.5-4.0 and so on.

Would make it very easy to see at a glance which albums were good/"recommendable" to others and would also indicate which albums could be removed to free up space.

Of course only once everthing was rated, so only "ratings obssessed" ppl might find this interesting

Did i leave anything out ?

any plug-in creators interested ?

.should not be too difficult to do.

[KingSparta]

why not just use the ratings for albums from Billboard.com

[nila]

I'd have to pull content from a website and I haven't played with that yet - it'd be new to me so would make it take 10 times as long

Feel free to do it if u want thou

[KingSparta]

well, i can show you how it can be done in e-mail if you wish.

[nila]

I wouldn't mind knowing for personal knowledge sake - but for the sake of the plugin I dont think I'd have the time - I need to re-make website creator from the ground up and thats gonna take a bit of time

Your call.

[KingSparta]

when i get home i will snip out some code and send it to you

[NoCodeUK]

Surely this is something different to creating an average rating for an album using your own ratings?  My average rating for an album might be 3 or 4 if I thought most of the tracks sucked wheras the billboard reviewer might have given it an 8...Rating is always going to be a subjective thing...

[KingSparta]

wheras the billboard reviewer might have given it an 8...Rating is always going to be a subjective thing...

Not really, the Rating is based on sales, so if it sucks people do not buy it.

[Doof]

By that reasoing, you should love Britney Spears and Eminem. Do you?

[KingSparta]

By that reasoing, you should love Britney Spears and Eminem. Do you?

'...Baby One More Time' Charted At 01 In 1999

Listening to: '...Baby One More Time' from 'The Best Of Britney Spears' by 'Britney Spears' on Media Center 11


'Real Slim Shady, The' Charted At 04 In 2000

Listening to: 'Real Slim Shady, The' from 'The Best Of Eminem' by 'Eminem' on Media Center 11

And The Ironic Thing Is Eminem Does Talk About Britney Spears In This Song, Is It A Conspiracy?

Another Good Song:

'Stan' Charted At 51 In 2000

Listening to: 'Stan' from 'The Best Of Eminem (With Dido)' by 'Eminem (With Dido)' on Media Center 11

[KingSparta]

Now Back To: Album Ratings Plugin

[hit_ny]

Cool...we got some interest..let me try to stir things up

i suggested a user-based system for album rating as it allowed one to personalise their collection, also allows one to calibrate ones likes/dislikes relative to the market. If i have a list of albums that i like and i could compare with others, i have confidence that i can "trust" their recommendations on billboard, amazon,etc. There have been many times when i see an album rated at 4 or 5 but i have no idea whether i will think the same.

Say ppl could post their top 10 to a website on JRiver. but thats for "maybe" the future . It could also be possible to pull up a rating from billboard, amazon etc and display it next to what the user thought, to see how one's score compared with the market, but i think this has limited value and adds more complexity.



since my albums would average in the 2(!)-3-4 range with the previous formula, the figures after the decimal points would make it harder to see differences. So maybe a system that allowed scores to be more separated out might be more meaningful.

A ranking system based on points. 0-100.  

multiplying by an album weight of 20 to separate things out.

Example.

If an album has 10 tracks.

Min.Score  = Sum(10(# of tracks) x 1 (rating)) / 10(# of tracks) x 20(album weight)

gives 20 points out of 100.

Max Score = Sum(10(# of tracks) x 5 (rating)) / 10(# of tracks) x 20(album weight)

gives 100 out of 100


If i want to take this further to separate between ratings, i can use a logarithmic scale....by making the assumption. that i like a track of rating 2 twice as much as that of rating 1 and rating 3 twice as much as 2 and so on. This gives another set of weights

Rating     Track Weight
   1               1
   2               2
   3               4
   4               8
   5               16

so taking the previous example. With a modifed album weight of 1.25 ( to get a max score of 100)

Min.Score  = Sum(10(# of tracks) x 1 (rating) x 1(track weight 1)) / 10(# of tracks) x 1.25(album weight)

gives 1.25 points out of 100.

Max Score = Sum(10(# of tracks) x 5 (rating) x 16(track weight 5) )/ 10(# of tracks) x 1.25(album weight)

gives 100 out of 100

This should give a better spread of album values. Scores could also be rounded up or down to give a nice whole number view.

An easy way to do this would be to create a custom calculated field called Album ratings. The plugin would calculate the value and populate it on an album basis.

One could then use panes and an appropriate view scheme set up in rating intervals of 10 for a scale of 1-100.

Any albums that dont have all tracks rated automatically get a score of 0.


Forgot to mention another advantage of this plugin, makes it easier to know which albums to take on  vacation.

[ph_bradley]

By that reasoing, you should love Britney Spears and Eminem. Do you?

'...Baby One More Time' Charted At 01 In 1999

Listening to: '...Baby One More Time' from 'The Best Of Britney Spears' by 'Britney Spears' on Media Center 11


'Real Slim Shady, The' Charted At 04 In 2000

Listening to: 'Real Slim Shady, The' from 'The Best Of Eminem' by 'Eminem' on Media Center 11

And The Ironic Thing Is Eminem Does Talk About Britney Spears In This Song, Is It A Conspiracy?

Another Good Song:

'Stan' Charted At 51 In 2000

Listening to: 'Stan' from 'The Best Of Eminem (With Dido)' by 'Eminem (With Dido)' on Media Center 11

Media Center 11? I THAT a conspiracy? Media Center 9.1 is only just on release, Media Center 10 hardly has any new features so we can't really justify calling it a beta - so what's media center 11 then?

[KingSparta]

'Rock And Roll, Hoochie Koo' Charted At 12 In 1974

Listening to: 'Rock And Roll, Hoochie Koo'
from 'Dazed And Confused' by 'Rick Derringer' on Media Center 12 (Gold)

[hit_ny]

The plugin would calculate the value and populate it on an album basis.

Does the plugin API allow field updates ?

in this case it would be a user defined field.

[NoCodeUK]

OMG King have you no shame...You are saying that Mr Blobby, The Wurzels "Ive got a brand new combine harvester" and Westlife are all good music??? Shame on you!!!

[Marko]

Best of British

Oh yeah, hands up everyone who owns the "c-c-c-c-c'mon everybody" jive bunny album

[hit_ny]

Repeat !!

Does the plugin API allow field updates ?

in this case it would be a user defined field.

[Marko]

apologies hit_ny, your thread got kinda hijacked by interacts resident lunatics!!

I can't answer your question for certain, but kings plugins populate fields so I'm tempted to say yes.

C'mon guys, let's get this thread back on track and see if this idea's a go-er or not

[hit_ny]

I can't answer your question for certain, but kings plugins populate fields so I'm tempted to say yes.

Yes, Rhino's playing now allows the user to update a field as well..so im thinking this might be possible as well, programatically. But it requires caution/testing, so as not to mess up the library.

Surely this is something different to creating an average rating for an album using your own ratings?  My average rating for an album might be 3 or 4 if I thought most of the tracks sucked wheras the billboard reviewer might have given it an 8...Rating is always going to be a subjective thing.

After some thought on this subject i think there are 2 types of rating ppl unconsciously use depending on their experience and environment.

- Conservative, meaning rating 3=ok, 4=good, 5=excepional.
- Optimistic meaning rating 3 = not bad, 4 = nice, 5=good/exceptional.

I dont know about others, but i tend to fall in the first, meaning i dont have many/any albums that would be 4 star or above..the majority would fall in the 3-4 range. This might change over time.


Of course this is averaging out tracks that were heard randomly rather than in sequence, which is a debatable point for sure. I tend to do this with albums within the same genre/similar BPM, idea being the really good tracks will stick out in comparison to the others.

Would an album score better if it was heard in its entirety rather than randomly ?  For some genres this will be more important than others. In this case, the track ratings could always be increased/decreased as applicable, or even entered in directly for the album as a whole.

After playing with different ratings formulas in excel, i came to the conclusion that the simplest avg formula was the best and most meaningful. Namely an album average of the individual tracks. I thought it would be nice to add a rounding function on multiples of 0.5 so for example an album that averaged out at 3.3 would become 3.5 whereas 3.2 would become 3.0

This gives a max rating of 5 which many sites, amazon etc use to rate albums in increments of 0.5. There is nice guide here



There is another variable i would like to throw into the mix, number of plays. Some albums remain good if not become better over extended play and others lose their initial luster.

So it might be interesting to check how many times a track has been played and stayed at the same rating. If for instance a track has been played 10 times and stays at the same rating, does it get promoted by 0.5 /1 points ? Which over time will separate out the really good albums from the rest. This would be a one time promotion only, and could be applied when the plugin is run on a periodical basis. I realise MC track rating does not allow for decimal ratings but the plugin could do this internally.

this point i leave to others to discuss. but otherwise...i think the above system should be fairly easy to use and work regardless of which rating camp ( conservative, optimistic) one belongs to.

what do ppl think so far ?