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[kstuart]

In other words, in your mind, what do 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 stars correspond to, in terms of the quality of the track ?

Is it entirely gut feeling ?

Do you try to distribute each level uniformly through your collection ?

Or do you rarely assign a 1 or 2 ?  "Grade Inflation"  

[MrC]

I don't use ratings.

I either want to listen to a song now, later, or maybe in the future.

[syndromeofadown]

I use ratings as a reminder.

If there is an absolutely terrible song on an otherwise good album, i give it 1 so i know to remove it from playing now.
If there is a good song on an otherwise terrible album, i give it 5 so i don't forget the album forever.

One time i made a smart list that only had songs rated 5. It was good but you must be careful not to kill the music.
It doesn't take long before 5's turn into 1's.

Pretty simple. I doubt i have more than 100 tracks with a rating.

[glynor]

That's a really great question.

I've given my system a lot of thought.  I've also changed my mind once or twice before settling on the current system, though I never "invested heavily" in rating until more recently when I settled on my current scheme (a few years ago).

I rate like this:

* : Song I want to keep, for "completeness" reasons.  To not break up an album (or maybe a live set I attended, or something like that), but that I would otherwise probably delete.  This is used as a "do not include" flag in many of my "mixer" views, and for transferring to handhelds and whatnot.  This is also used to denote poor quality recordings (mostly live) that I don't want to just delete for some reason.  Maybe there is one standout part of a particular live set, or something, that gets rated higher, but the rest get ones to keep them out of my way.

** : I consider this to be equivalent to blank.  I don't ever bother to rate things two star, unless it is one of a few songs in an album or recording which has a lot of other highly rated tracks (and then, only so "I don't forget it isn't done").  Vanilla.  Catalog tracks.  My full library isn't very heavily rated, though, so blank can also mean "unrated".  Obviously, this is the biggest part of the curve in my ratings histogram, if you consider blank == 2.  If blank isn't equal to two, though, I have only a smattering of these.

*** : Songs I really like.  The best track on a mediocre recording, or a song I would consider "quite good" on a fantastic record, though not one of the best.  Sometimes, a still-pretty-good track from an Artist I used to love, but which has now jumped the shark a bit.  I actually have fewer three-star rated tracks than four-star rated tracks, but that's from a selection bias (and it is hard to decide between two and three).  The trend, however, is the reverse.  Eventually three will overtake four, as a higher percentage of my library gets rated.

**** : The best songs on a really good album.  In many cases, the best songs by a particular Artist.  Songs, or recordings, I'll still remember 15 years from now.  Also, some things that have special meaning in some way, despite maybe not being the best "quality" recording.  Or, sometimes, just really good examples of a pristine recording, or version, of a particular track.  This is actually my highest count (in raw numbers) of rated tracks, when you exclude blank.  But, except for new imports, those ratings are quite stable (and few, relatively, in number).  After I started this system, I did try to go through the catalog a bit (I just lost steam at some point), and I rated only 4s and 5s, so there is an "incomplete bias" as well.

***** : The best songs of all time.  There aren't many of these, and fewer Artist still have more than one.

[glynor]

I basically rate when I'm inspired to do so, and not systematically.  I think this, over time, might give you actually a more realistic long-term "rating" quality, in many cases.  Though, I do also have to revise old ratings down here and there (exuberance with a new record, or something).  There's a lot of fours that later become threes as they "age" (and an occasional three that grows on me to become a five over the years).  I'm resistant to rating things too highly too quickly, as well, though.

But, I'm overall not very consistent with it.  My favorite artists are rated much more thoroughly than my less favorite ones, though even this is spotty.  I go on kicks where I'll rate things for a few nights, and then when I'm listening to other kinds of music, I might not be in the same "place" to do it.

So, there are big gaps.  But, I feel like that keeps it "difficult" to get a higher rating, avoiding the trap of sliding everything up the scale (and then leaving it there).

I also find that having JRemote, really, really helps me rate things more effectively.  I'm quite likely to quickly rate a particularly beautiful track, while I'm on-the-go, for whatever reason.  I'm less likely to be "doing something else" where walking over to the PC (or stopping what I'm doing) is relevant, I guess.

I follow, even less rigorously, a similar scheme for my Photos, though almost everything that would be considered a one gets deleted instead.

For video, I basically don't rate them at all.  For TV Shows, I ether delete them when I'm done (or have the system auto-delete them on a schedule), or I keep every single episode.  Sometimes I keep them all, and then when a series ends, I decide if I'm ever (really, maybe, possibly) likely to want to watch it again.  If not, it gets trashed.  If so, I keep them and throw them on an archive drive.

Same with Movies.  I don't bother to rate, but there is something of a rating in the "winnowing".  Ones and twos get deleted.  Threes might get kept, depending on my mood and how full my archive drives are.  So, there's "new stuff I haven't watched yet", and "stuff I'm keeping".

In any case, a great question, and I hope others answer.  I'm curious as to how other people handle this same thing.  I've also often wondered about ratings for other media types than music, as well, as my system isn't anywhere near as well defined or practiced there.

[glynor]

I should also note, related to another recent conversation, that I negotiate all of this with my wife.  She's free to disagree, and change ratings herself.  She doesn't usually change ratings I've made much, and I don't change hers much, but we often discuss it briefly at the time (with the remote in hand and the OSD pulled up).

We have close enough to the same tastes, and where they diverge, I have little interest in what she rates this thing or that thing (because I'm not likely to pick the entire "genre" anyway), and the reverse is true for her.

Now, I just need to get my daughter on my side. 

[wig]

I moved to a custom 100 point rating scale (though I still fill in the 5 star field for Play Doctor purposes).

The less likely I am to skip a song, the higher I rate it. I find this method useful, and it removes the pressure of trying to rate the 'quality' of a song.

When I increase a rating, I end it with an odd number to denote it's "on the rise", (61, 63) and vice versa for lowering ratings. I use 5's and 0's to denote a stable rating.

I have a custom field I use to tag the music the wife likes.

[InflatableMouse]

Roughly ...

1 - skip, speech, crap, short intro's - but nothing I want to delete to keep albums intact.
2 - crap, but good enough for background noise. Typically my wife's music 
3 - just another good song like there are so many
4 - a better good song
5 - goosebumps, watery eyes and lump-in-throat kinda good

Defining the meaning of stars is the easy part. The hard part is actually rating songs. One day I rate something 3, the other day I'm wondering, why isn't this 4? This is the reason why I stopped rating. I never agree with myself.

Another thing I've considered is to base it on 'quality' but I never worked out the details how to do it exactly. Basically, base it on good musical compositions and production quality rather than 'what I like' which depends on mood, time of day, what I ate and how much I drank - which are all different every day.

[DoubtingThomas]

Roughly ...

1 - skip, speech, crap, short intro's - but nothing I want to delete to keep albums intact.
2 - crap, but good enough for background noise. Typically my wife's music 
3 - just another good song like there are so many
4 - a better good song
5 - goosebumps, watery eyes and lump-in-throat kinda good

Defining the meaning of stars is the easy part. The hard part is actually rating songs. One day I rate something 3, the other day I'm wondering, why isn't this 4? This is the reason why I stopped rating. I never agree with myself.

#2 LOL !!!

I do delete stuff.. and I used Rating 1 for that.  So periodically I check my Rating 1's and delete them.

Unless it's an album that must be in a certain order, Pink Floyd and live, etc... I will eventually reorder by rating, so the best is always played first.

I have remotes all over the house that I can do rating from... so no matter what I'm doing, if a song sucks... RATING 1 ....

[rjm]

As others have commented, I find music is hard to rate and my ratings change depending on how I feel.

This simple system works for me:

1) When I run into an artist I like I tend to like most of their music and my opinion does not change very often. So I created an ArtistRating relational field and populate it with 1 for artists I really like and leave it unpopulated for all other artists.

2) When I run into an album or song that is really special I assign it a 5 in the standard Rating field.

3) All my views have a Search List pane for custom filters and two standards I use are "Favorite Artists" which filters on ArtistRating=1 and "Favorite Titles" which filters on Rating=5.

[pcstockton]

I have blank ratings for everything.  It is simply too overwhelming to think about rating all of my albums let alone individual tracks.  

I mean it took almost 6 months to codify all of the genres I wanted to use and then actually tag every artist/album.  I ended up with 62 by the way and only a few "made-up" genres that I need to differentiate the majority of my collection that is what other people would lump into one genre, e.g. "Experimental", or "Avant-garde".  How could you put Ruins in "Avant-garde" with Fred Frith??  No, there must be Avant-Rock (Spiritualized/Battles), Avant-Metal (Tool/Ruins), and Avant-Hip-Hop (Buck65/Sage Francis), then Avant-garde.  But I wanted to shy from "Neo-Folk", and "Punk-grass" type genres....

Anyway..... this was hard enough.  I can't fathom doing ratings.

-p

[glynor]

and only a few "made-up" genres that I need to differentiate the majority of my collection that is what other people would lump into one genre, e.g. "Experimental", or "Avant-garde".  How could you put Ruins in "Avant-garde" with Fred Frith??  No, there must be Avant-Rock (Spiritualized/Battles), Avant-Metal (Tool/Ruins), and Avant-Hip-Hop (Buck65/Sage Francis), then Avant-garde.  But I wanted to shy from "Neo-Folk", and "Punk-grass" type genres....

Hah.  I had to shy away from that, and stick to "coarse genres".  I tried using [SubGenre] for a while, but later abandoned it.  A few of my genres are getting a bit unweildy, but mostly it is fine.

I use my "mixes" to do more what you're doing with Genre, and keep the Genres for "quickly finding what I'm looking for" (which requires fewer, not more).

[InflatableMouse]

I find Genres are even worse to do than ratings because I come across too much stuff I don't know what genre it really is and I find myself browsing sites like allmusic and last.fm to find ideas for genres, which takes too much time and is boring. Don't work that well for me either.

Do you base that on artist, album or individual tracks? On Artist generalizes way too much, individual tracks becomes a task like ratings but worse for the reason I mentioned above, so the only way I see is to do that is album, but what about the exceptions? Don't feel right categorizing something like Rock when its really folk, even if its just one song on a rock album from a typical rock artist.

Then there's Classic Rock, when does that stop? late 70's, 80's? Does that change or is that a fixed period in time? Will in 10 years from now Guns 'n Roses become classic rock too? Or maybe its based on the sentiment that I don't want to put GnR on the same line as Led Zeppelin and its more like a Title that I feel some bands deserve and others don't ... and do you actually categorize those couple of songs on 'Tales and Mystery of Edgar Alan Poe' as classical or not?

Multiple genres for a track/tracks, do you use comma's or slashes, or combine them like blues-rock? What if there are three, blues/rock/folk?

Is no one using mood? What about using mood and situation? That would make things easier. I'm either happy or I'm not .

Ps. Subgenre is not a standard field?