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[benn600]

I have always looked at rating songs as the critical step.  I have put in a lot of time rating already, but still have a long way to go.  So, in an attempt to realize this desire once and for all, I have set a goal -- to finish rating all of my music library by December 22, 2009.  This gives me, and another family member who is participating as well, just under a year to complete our ratings.  The date merely represents before our traditional Christmas party.  So I want to document progress here and listen to any feedback on other users rating their libraries--or if they use a different technique.  Rating every song means that I have essentially touched, or listened to, EVERY single song.  It will be great because rating inevitably boosts my favorite music smartlists providing seemingly new/fresh music.  It's also nice because I often find songs that I, and pretty much no one else, has ever heard.  People are so radio focused it seems.

One unsure problem I am encountering is that it is not difficult to quickly add to my library.  I did some research on Interact and I realized 2.5 years ago, when I discovered MC, I had about 7,000 songs.  Today, I have 17,015.  So, that is about 4,000 new songs per year!  Of course the earlier months displayed much faster growth because I was building up my collection with all the oldie favorites I didn't own.  Currently, CD purchases are much slower and include some older ones plus a few new releases whenever I can't resist--they're pricey compared to older used CDs @ $4.  So I haven't decided if this means all except newly purchased, but I'm thinking not.  So it is to my advantage to limit new purchases whenever possible--unless it's an amazing CD that will be easily and quickly rated 4s/5s.  Favorite artist CDs are always so easy because I already know and like their style.

So the stats:
17,015 songs
7,015 rated songs (nice coincidence)
10,000 songs to rate!

It results in an average rating requirement of about 30 songs/day.  I have an Excel spreadsheet to track and keep up to date.  I think I can accomplish this but it will be a chore, no doubt.  The key is to always have unrated music playing.  However, this can be boring and a drain.  Sometimes you get sick of boring music and want your favorites again.  I have, on two occasions, rated more than 300 songs in a single day.  Funny how each day like this basically drops my per day requirement by a single song.  Here's to a glorious rate-2009!

[Peter_T]

I travel a fair bit for work, so before heading out I load up my iPod with at least a few hours of unrated material.  On these occasions - whether driving along the highway or waiting in the airport - it's nothing to burn through hundreds of songs.  On these occasions I rarely listen to the whole song, but instead I rate it and move along. 

I'm at about 99% rated material now, with a library of 25,000 tracks or so.  I'm a full-album collector and own about 95% of my material (most on CD) so it's great to have the crap rated as such, since I can't fathom deleting track 3 from a particular album just because I gave it two or one stars. 

As for the task ahead of you, all you can do is chip away at it, understanding that a fully-rated utopia awaits you. 

[benn600]

Nice way to put it.  I own 100% of my library on CD.  I was saying 99% but the one CD in question I ended up just buying so I could keep the 100% stat.  It usually takes me 30 seconds per song, on average.  Several songs I actually have to listen to much of it before I can make an accurate rating.

Every few days I'm going to recalculate my per day requirement.  If I see it going down, then I'm getting ahead of myself.  Obviously if it goes up, I'm not meeting my per day quota.  Of course we have some CDs that are pretty easily 2 stars.  We use 1 star for duplicate tracks (CD to CD) and very special tracks, such as a 40 minute thunder and lighting track...usually long tracks.

[benn600]

Time for a little update.  I started with 10,000 songs to rate.  My completion date goal is December 22, 2008.  I started with 10,000 songs to rate.  Back on January 4, when I started, this meant 352 days of rating and requires an average rating of 28.41 songs per day.

I have been pushing forward quite well and have been lowering this number.  Every song lower per day means that I met my daily quote plus rated an additional number of songs equal to the days remaining...or about 350 songs extra at this point.  My average per day rating rate is now down to 27.20 songs per day!  This is a difference of 1.21 songs fewer per day.  So, I rated my quote plus around 400 additional songs!

I have pushed the number awaiting a rating down to 9,464 -- so have rated over 500 songs in less than a week.  It would be great to finish this once and for all.  Who knows, if I keep this pace up I could easily finish before summer.  Not that this speed will continue...

9,464

[mabes]

Do you really have to listen to every single song, aren't there some you know? When I first started rating, I told myself I would never rate every single song, I just went through a text listing and quickly rated my favorites as 5. Later I went back and gave some 4 stars, tweaking a little here and there. Then I started adding 3s, and now I rate as I listen. I've still got a couple thousand unrated, will get to them.

[benn600]

Definitely not.  Not when I have 17,024 total songs.  It really gets complicated with duplicates, remixes, etc.  I have to determine if I want or don't want the live version alone or in addition to the studio version, etc.  Realize that my library is also 100% full CDs, which means that all the "singles" and few hundred I know I like may be easy, but outside of those, there are a ton of songs I have literally never heard before.  There are a some genres and artists which I can quickly go through and rate 2 stars (my lowest typical rating).  Certain assortments of music can require listening to a large portion of the song before I can make a valid rating choice.

By the way: I'm down to 8,410 left to rate. <- over one thousand fewer than my last post.

8,410

[mabes]

Definitely not.  Not when I have 17,024 total songs.  It really gets complicated with duplicates, remixes, etc.  I have to determine if I want or don't want the live version alone or in addition to the studio version, etc.  Realize that my library is also 100% full CDs, which means that all the "singles" and few hundred I know I like may be easy, but outside of those, there are a ton of songs I have literally never heard before.  There are a some genres and artists which I can quickly go through and rate 2 stars (my lowest typical rating).  Certain assortments of music can require listening to a large portion of the song before I can make a valid rating choice.

By the way: I'm down to 8,410 left to rate. <- over one thousand fewer than my last post.

I admire your dedication. Do you have some sort of master list of what to listen to first or are you starting from the top?

I know what you mean about songs I've never listened to before,I discovered a lot of good songs I had and didn't know. More to come. But now that I have last.fm and the associated plugins, I can't keep track of all that. 

I'll never get everything rated, I have a feeling you will.

[benn600]

I have a very wide range of techniques for rating.  I have gone to audio and searched for r=[] (unrated) and then I can just start from the top.  I have literally eaten away at tens of CDs doing this.  Another technique is a "10 Not Rated" smartlist I have that gives me 10 random unrated songs.  I use this as a goal--oh, let me know rate these 10.  I try to sneak in a few whenever I can.  My main complaint is that back 2 years when I finished my initial library building, I was well under 10K total songs.  Had I not added since then, I'd be all done!  I did some calculations and it was obvious that I was not rating as fast as I was adding to my library.  My "rated" percentage was going down.  It was probably 35% at one point and then became 30%...so I was falling way behind.

Call it a New Year's Resolution or whatever...the idea just popped into my mind.  One big draw is that once everything is rated, I can add a CD and feel compelled to make sure I stay on top of rating.  When I import a huge stack of CDs--which is usually because I wait until the stack is huge--I often forgot to run through and mark the couple songs on each album I bought the CD for!  So months after ripping the CD, I'd run across a CD and get upset that I didn't even take the time to rate the key song.  But once everything is rated, it will be a joy to run through a single CD and spend some serious time with it.

Oh well, this will be interesting to report feedback as I progress.  I could easily be done by April if I keep up my current rate (not likely)...maybe by summer.