But isn't a 4 star track a 4 star track anyways, ie pretty good ?...or is your track rating relative to how good you felt the album was. In which case is it possible that duplicates with same artist & name receive different track ratings because you felt the albums were different.
I try to rate tracks based on their rank on the album, same as I try to rate albums based on their rank in an artist's
oeuvre; so tracks that appear on other compilations could get different ratings if I was really brutal about it, but I check for duplicates with different tags on a regular basis, so I iron these out - otherwise it would get pretty messy.
Also what would your artist rating for above 2 tracks be in this case ?
It all starts with artist rating. The two tracks above could be by the same artist - David Bowie has made some bad albums, but he's great. A good example of how this rating system works is:
Artist: David Bowie - 4 stars
Album: Hunky Dory - 5 stars
Track: Quicksand - 4 stars
Album: Let's Dance - 2 stars
Track: Let's Dance - 4 stars
I think 'Quicksand' is a better song than 'Let's Dance', but in its own shallow way, 'Let's Dance' is a great track! Typically, the high-scoring tracks on low-scoring albums or by low-scoring artists are more commercial and inconsequential, but I love them anyway - like 'She Sells Sanctuary' by The Cult or 'I Got 5 On It' by Luniz.
Heh - I even toyed with the idea of a Genre Rating at one point, but it just seemed like too blunt an instrument to be useful.
Ultimately, great tracks are great tracks, whatever the reason. There was a time when I thought rating tracks was way too geeky and clinical - until I got an MP3 walkman! It really helps when it comes to honing just which great tracks get transferred, and now I find it very handy when I just want to listen to random mixes of my favourite stuff, artists or albums