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[hit_ny]

i tend to use
1 - not used
2 - avg/don't like
3 - ok/nice
4 - good
5 - excellent/exceptional

i rarely use 5 except where its warranted. I tend not to use 1 as it adversely affects the avg score i can give an album. A score of 2 IMO takes care of tracks i prefer not to hear again.

I use the MCXML export plugin along with an XSL i got from Scott Raymond to average album scores and present them in IE. I expect with the new database in v11, avg album scores will be more accessible.

There are albums that i have with CUE files.  I open notepad with a tracklisting and score them trackwise and get an avg score which i enter in a custom Album Score field. I prefer not to split these hoping instead for the day when MC will understand Cue files.

When i compare album scores with amazon, i find frequently my score is less by 1 ie if i were to add 1 to my avg score i tends to match/approach that on amazon.

Rating tracks is a tedious job at times but i think of it as a good investment  for the future.

How do people rate their music ?

[bjsolem]

There are some old threads obout this that you might be able to find with a search.

For me:

5 - Classic song I can listen to forever.
4 - Good songs by good artists or something new that I like a lot.
3 -  Songs I might not know that well, don't grab my attention (yet), are part of a good album, or that I need to listen to more etc.
2 -  Usually someone else's music in the house, or maybe a song that I don't want to delete but I don't want picked up by my smartlists, or a song that I am only keeping to maintain a complete album.
1 - will likely be deleted soon, maybe something new that I tried and didn't like, I might give it one more try before it is deleted.

[bebop]

Actually, I don't rate it at all...I love it all ( 12,375 tracks, 2,433 Artists, 2,596 Albums )..

[LonWar]

I can't really rate according to my taste as it changes depending on my mood...

1 day I could hate a song a few days later I'm lovin it...

I use AMG's rating and put it in MC just for fun...

[DocLotus]

1 thru 5 works fine for me.

The IMDB (International Movie Data Base also uses 1 - 5 (stars) & it seems to work pretty good; although I sometimes question why a great movie was only give a 2 star rating, or a so-so movie got 5 stars.

I do notice that there are few 5 star movies & a lot of 1 & 2 star ones.  That is what comes from watching too much DirecTV.

Or, maybe it's simply that a lot of movies are simply junk.

[paulr]

5.  Can't live without it (figuratively)
4.  Excellent or Great
3.  Very good
2.  Good
1.  Fair

I don't buy CDs I don't like, and if I happen to, they get quickly sold.  I keep nothing on my hard drive that I don't consider at least "fair".

Category 5 is reserved for the best of the best (typically songs that I would put on a "Best Of" album if I were to make one).

Originally, I was using a scheme similar to yours, but I found that it was meaningless because everything was a 4 or 5.  So I revised it to this scheme and I find it much more meaningful and useful.

[lee269]

As a supplementary, how do people find that their ratings help their listening?

Unlike paulr, Im a magpie with music, down to ripping the various free CDs of 80% rubbish you get free with newspaper in the UK. How do I rate my media? Inconsistently. I found any 1-5 ratings to be not worth the time I spend on them. I change my mind too often depending on my mood. More often than not I tend to go by number of plays to get my latest 'hits', which becomes a self fulfilling prophecy that ignores my favourite songs I havent listened to lately, so doesnt help much either.

Ive lost count of the times Ive set up a smartlist, only for my wife to flick through it: 'This is all YOUR songs', 'I just want to listen to something funky' etc. What does 'funky' mean? Ive never bothered with genres cos they give me a headache. Id love a solution to this, but its something that cant be programmed I fear, and I havent figured a way of solving it .

And - Ive got umpteen unplayed songs in my library. I have a 'lucky dip' smartlist of unplayed tracks, which Im working through. Ive only got 4500 files in my library! How I envy bebop who loves all 12,000.

[hit_ny]

Originally, I was using a scheme similar to yours, but I found that it was meaningless because everything was a 4 or 5.  So I revised it to this scheme and I find it much more meaningful and useful.

Interesting point. i use the avg score to differentiate between albums. which run from a range of 2.5 - 4.1. Its a small range but quite senstitive. Of course thats if i went with albums. Usually i would pick a random listings of tracks and sprinkle in a few 4s or 5s along with the 3s.

'm trying to find a way to pick albums that tend to consistant ie no 2s just 3s and above but cant seem to think of any smartlist that can do this.

[paulr]

Until MC supports math functions in tags, I doubt this is possible automatically.  However, you can do it with the help of Excel...

If you export your library and import it into Excel, you can perform an average deviation (AVEDEV) function on the ratings for each album.  Then create a new tag for the value AVEDEV.  The closer the value of AVEDEV is to zero, the more consistently the tracks of a given album are rated.  Then you could make a smartlist that looked for whole albums that are [rating =>3] with an [AVEDEV =< x], where x is the limiting value (0 = perfectly consistent, >1 = not at all consistent).

[TAFKAFEX]

Interesting point. i use the avg score to differentiate between albums...

Interesting point.
For me it make's no sense at all to rate an album 'by average'. I use the rating to mark the tracks I like (and creating playlists). There are always tracks on an album I like more or less. And why should I have to listen to the bad ones? Like 20 years ago with the vinyls?

[EpF]

5: Excellent
4: Very Good
3: Good
2: OK
1: Not So Good

I find the real problem is whether to rate in the context of the artist, or life in general; for example, is  'The Captain' by Leanard Cohen one of his 'only ok' songs, or is it a very good song compared to some of the crap out there?!  Someone said their ratings depend on their mood, and I guess mine do too - it turns out that I rated 'The Captain' 3; somewhere between the two!

Listening to: Tortoise - 'Spiderwebbed', from 'Tortoise'  (rated 4 Stars, from a Smartlist which plays only 4- and 5-Star songs   )

[kaiynne]

I created a custom field for my ratings.  album rating out of 100 and track rating out of one hundred.  I went through and rated all my albums from 1 to 100.  then I created a playlist which basically is like a song showdown.

It takes 2 songs from the 95-100 group and plays them back to back for comparison purposes. then two songs from the 90-94 and so on.

In my playing now screen I have track rating right next to album rating, so i can look at the album rating and see whether that individual track live up to the album rating or surpasses it.  Then uses the other songs as a relative comparison to see if that song really is an 85 for example.  Slowly I am filling in all of my track ratings.  Finally when math functions are allowed in tags I will compute a new score called average rating and compare that to my subjective album rating to see how close I was.

It is a lot of effort, but in the meantime I am getting some really awesome mixes to listen.  And you really notice the quality of the songs at the beggining as compared to the end.  But every once in a while i will find out that there is a track that deserves a 90 say on an album that i rated 50.  

If anyone is interested in my methodology as in how I set up all of the smartlists and user defined fields I would be happy to share that info.

[BigMikeSantaCruz]

I manage only MP3s, so I rate them:

5 - My favorites. Likely to be burned to CD upon request of a friend
4 - Party Music. Within each genre, rated as to whether this would play well at a party.
3 - Good song. May be played while gardening or housekeeping, or as part of a complete album.
2 - Bad song. Filtered out. Kept in the event a friend wants a complete CD burned.
1 - Needs work. Filtered out. It needs to be reripped, or have a chunk of noise edited out.

With these ratings, I can quickly judge my audience, and create a smartlist with 4's and 5's in Reggae, Dance Hall, Dub, and Ska. Or, I could play 4's and 5's in Rock, Progressive, Fusion, R&B, and Pop. I've had some pretty good parties with this strategy.
--
Big Mike

[bc]

Not sure why but I use the reverse of most people's rating system. Mine is:

1 best
2 better
3 good
4 okay
5 delete

I use numerical ratings not stars--less real estate.

[modelmaker]

Rating system:

5. Favorites
4. Juke Box (70% of collection, about 10k tracks)
3. Live Albums/Tracks
2. Jazz
1. Country
?. Not in Jukebox rotation

Classical is a separate Library.

I haven't gotten around to sorting out all the Genre tags. I usually use Random Sort/ 4,5 rating for Jukebox play, or I play whole albums. I periodically  switch some of the #4 rated & #? rated to keep the "jukebox" fresh

[jleerigby]

1. Only keeping it becuase it's part of an album
2. Might listen to it if not in a fussy mood.
3. Good (most smartlists pick these)
4. Very good
5. Reserved for my all time top 20ish tracks

[Cmagic]

Hi,

5 - All time favorites (would take them on a desert island) (26 songs now)
4 - Best tracks of an album  (1108 songs)
3 - Default rating for all  (14178 songs)
2 - Weakest track of an album
1 - Really use it to filter out songs that should not play in smartlists  but are part of an album (speech, interludes, applauds, noises). For example if you play Lou Reed - Fire music (from  The Raven) in a playlist for a cocktail your guests might wonder where you bought your HiFi from !!! In most cases though, your guests are also your friends. They know you and your musical taste pretty well so you should be Ok forgetting about the one star crappy stuff !

Nice sunny day in Paris (rated 5 stars),

have a great "5 stars" day !

C.

[bjsolem]

As a supplementary, how do people find that their ratings help their listening?

I use the star ratings in my smartlists a lot.  Nothing gets sync'd to my ipod that has a 1 or 2 star rating, unless it is unrated.

I usually start smartlists with rating >= 3 stars, so even if I am just playing with a new smartlist it will be something like rating >= 3, genre = Alternative, bpm > 60.

I try to make sure that all my tracks get rated, sometimes I don't get around to doing much else with them.

I'd like to get all my pics rated, but that has been harder to keep up with.

[hit_ny]

As a supplementary, how do people find that their ratings help their listening?

I usually start smartlists with rating >= 3 stars, so even if I am just playing with a new smartlist it will be something like rating >= 3, genre = Alternative, bpm > 60.

i use a similar system. i find the avg score (for albums at least) helps to find the better ones in a hurry. With music libraries getting larger it gets hard to keep track of the good albums around. So for me the primary use for rating is to search out the good tracks.

The track ratings help to make a random playlist that i will like. I find this most useful with tracks with lower BPMs say < 120 anything above that (roughly speaking)  requires a human Djs touch. Of course not knocking DJs that deal with lower BPMs, but this is as close as i can get MC to act like a personalised DJ.

I find that i have to fine tune the BPMs for some tracks as MC tends to get it wrong sometime..a mulitple up/down of the actual BPM.

If anyone is interested in my methodology as in how I set up all of the smartlists and user defined fields I would be happy to share that info.

Sure will be interesting !!

if i get the gist, you give an album a score based on the first listen. Sort of how well the album as a whole hangs together.

Then on the second listen, you look at each track in detail and rate it, then compare the 2 scores.

In a way i am doing a similar thing, i use the preference field to indicate how good an album is overalll, with terms like Excellent, Good and OK. But i do both at once, its taken over a yr so far and im only 75% done. I felt the track ratings on thier own, sometimes ignored the whole album experience. I find with recent albums you get a list of good (or not so good) tracks with less emphasis on the album as a whole (YMMV)

I understand that some people might find 5 stars too constraining but i stuck with the 5 star system as it seemed the right level of granularity i was comfortable with.  I feel sometimes a 3 star track rating is probably wider than i would like, i might start to use 2 stars form tracks that are ok and use 1 for ones i dont like, would also have to be more generous going the other way.

Going from 5 stars to 100 point system is quite a stretch.

[rocketsauce]

5 - for all-time favorites
1 - mark for deletion

Don't use 2, 3 or 4.

Rob

[pipsqueak]

5 - foot tapping faves
4 - other great music
3 - minimum rating to be picked up by smartlists
2 - relisten and move to 3 or 1
1 - marked for deletion