Some People may rant about iPod and iTunes but I really like this combination. Especially the iTunes part of this duo because of it's good MP3 management features. I do not feel the need for a fancy media player on my PC, I'll rather use iTunes, even if it looks a lot like a spreadsheet.
As probably many other people my age I do have a diverse music collection, featuring a lot of different songs from several periods and artists. And not just the latest fad on a high rotation playlist.
I use the iTunes rating system to manage my music library, giving 5 Stars to 1 Star ratings to organize my music:
5 Star -My hands down favorite songs I would not live without (currently about 100 of my 5000+ songs)
4 Star - Very good songs I would need on a flash based player
3-Star - Good Songs I do not need to hear everyday
2-Star - Songs I don't care much about but either are important music milestones or nice to hear once in a year
1-Star - Songs I need to delete from my collection
Unrated - Songs I need to rate according to the above scheme.
To rate my music I use a smart playlist called "unrated songs". When I'm on a trip I'll often access this playlist from my iPod and rate songs as they play. The idea is that I'll eventually rate all songs and then delete the 1 star songs out of my library.
Anyway, coming back to the title of this post: Beside using the iTunes rating I also store my ratings in the comment field within the MP3 (ID3) tags. For that I rate the music as usual and then use a smartlist which checks for all star rated songs not having a comment containing the word "star". Then I can easily insert the rating in the iTunes comment field (i.e. a five star rated gets the comment "5-Star"). This way I don't care if I loose the iTunes rating (or actually the XML file where it is contained) or my playlists - the ID3 tags do contain the rating itself so I can apply the iTunes rating again whenever I need it.
Since I lost my ratings once before, I'll rather store them within the MP3 itself.
By the way, for people wanting to export the iTunes playlists to other media players, there is always Eric Daugherty's fine app iTunes Export. And the great MusicBridge by James Willis if you want to copy/sync your meta data from iTunes to Windows Media Player (or the other way around), including transferring iTunes Ratings to WMP ratings.
take care,
Kashif-
8 comments:
Excellent idea. Saved me lots of time looking for some obscure software to do this. Thanks!
Brilliant!!
I've moved my itunes library around quite a bit -- changing computer, HDD, etc. -- and somehow I've lost my ratings almost every time!... I've never really been able to manage the itunes library backup system. :-/
But with this trick, it should work!
Thanks!
That is a very good idea!
I loved that idea, but I've build a script to help me on applying it:
http://sites.google.com/site/cauerego/scripts/PutStarsinID3Comment.scptd.zip?attredirects=0&d=1
PRO! Stealing your blogged idea. Thanks. I format a lot.. 40000 songs is too much to go back through and re-star.
I just wanted to say that I rate my songs the EXACT same way. I have maybe ~50 5-star songs that are PHENOMENAL, 4-star are very good and I would prefer to listen to, 3-star I like but are perhaps sort of average, 2-star are songs I keep around because either other people like them or are novelty songs or are just good background music, and 1-star means I need to delete.
I came here from a google search looking for how to back up my library.
Heh, I've also been using exactly the same system. Not too surprising, since 5 separate ratings is not a lot to work with. Out of 10,000 rated songs, I have about 500 5-star and 500 4-star songs. It takes a little work, but you really get into your music, and saves a lot of time creating little playlists. My usual playlist is all my 4 and 5 star, plus 200 random/least heard 3 star to mix things up.
And I echo the first comment. Caue I wish I could use your script, dang Windows iTunes. (Unless that's changed...)
zurn
hello, good idea. i found mp3 rating friend, http://www.mp3ratingfriend.com
its a easy tool to do the job and it was free
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