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Author Topic: Vote up / Vote Down...  (Read 1687 times)

Peter_T

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Vote up / Vote Down...
« on: August 05, 2008, 07:23:52 am »

I have been scratching my head for a while on this one... I would like to get MC to increment up or down a field based on number of plays and skips (and maybe other factors, but let’s keep it simple for now).  I’m thinking of a field that would either take the difference of plays and skips (positive numbers could indicate a good song and negative ones a crappy song) 

That way, as I played music randomly, I could shape my collection by listening or skipping.  I could also set up some simple smartlists to exclude songs with more skips than plays, or otherwise bias what MC plays for me.  I couldn’t figure out how to get MC to compare the numbers or add them up or weigh them differently… maybe this isn’t possible? 

Then I noticed on pix01.com that this is exactly how the voting works… and I thought that it would be worth posting.  Any ideas?
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hit_ny

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Re: Vote up / Vote Down...
« Reply #1 on: August 05, 2008, 12:05:48 pm »

I couldn’t figure out how to get MC to compare the numbers or add them up or weigh them differently… maybe this isn’t possible? 

Not possible with 12, let's see what happens with 13 :)
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eba

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Re: Vote up / Vote Down...
« Reply #2 on: August 05, 2008, 01:02:18 pm »

You can do a simple calculated field to tell you whether a song has been skipped more, less, or equal times to that which it has been played:

=if(IsEqual([Number Plays],[Skip Count],3),Bad,if(IsEqual([Number Plays],[Skip Count],5),Good,Moderate))

:)

Peter_T

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Re: Vote up / Vote Down...
« Reply #3 on: August 05, 2008, 01:14:19 pm »

Cool... I can work with that!  ;)
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Peter_T

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Re: Vote up / Vote Down...
« Reply #4 on: August 05, 2008, 02:27:36 pm »

OK – here’s what I came up with… it’s not exactly what I had been thinking about, but I think it will help me sort out my tunes over many hours or years of listening.  I call it “Sink or Swim”.  The gist of it goes like this:

   - If I play a song through I probably like it (though not always)
   - If I skip a song I probably don’t like it (though not always)
   - If a song hasn’t been played yet, all I have to go by is the rating that I’ve given it…
   - Higher rated songs should be more tolerant to skips until they get a few  plays under their belt…

Then I set up a custom calculated field that labels a song “Sink” or “Swim” according to the following:

- Is Rating >= Skip Count? 
   - If Yes… Swim (Gives a new song a few chances in the rotation)
   - If No… Check if Rating is also >= Number Plays?
      - If Yes, Sink (If the rating is three, the number of skips is four, and the number of plays is one, it's probably not a great song)
      - If No (i.e. Number Plays is greater than Rating) then check if Number Plays >= Skip Count?
         - If Yes, let the track Swim
         - If not, it’s a Sinker. (or a stinker, if you will)

…Then I set up my every-day playlists to play swimmers much more frequently than sinkers.  (by limiting number of sinkers…)  I used to do something like this with a series of smartlists, but it’s oh-so-much-simpler using a custom field.  And MC responds much more quickly when checking a single tag instead of re-calculating a bunch of nested playlists. 

Hopefully this will be useful to someone else, too.

Here’s the code for the field:
=if(isEqual([Rating],[Skip Count],6),Swim,if(IsEqual([Rating],[Number Plays],6),Sink,if(IsEqual([Number Plays],[Rating],6),Swim,Sink)))
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gappie

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Re: Vote up / Vote Down...
« Reply #5 on: August 05, 2008, 03:52:31 pm »

nice work!  :)
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MrHaugen

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Re: Vote up / Vote Down...
« Reply #6 on: August 07, 2008, 01:33:27 pm »

This looks like a great way to make the listening behavior more dynamic.
If there only was a way of reducing or increasing the rating based on the weight of either skips or number plays percentage, I would be amazed...
Even without that possibility, I think my playlists will sound alot sweeter now!
Looking forward to testing it out Peter!
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