ITunes allows an up to 5-star rating for every song and album. I know many iTunes users wouldn't go through the hassle of rating all their songs, but for me this is an important tool on selecting the music I want to hear. As of this moment I have 7,492 songs in my library and I need to select those that get a place on my iPhone. Also, I want random playlists, where I like every single song. And the best way of accomplishing this is by rating each and every song.
Obviously my library is biased towards songs I like, so a rating has mostly a positive meaning as there's no point of separating bad and very bad songs. So here we go:
- 1 star goes to songs I don't want to hear. These would be candidates to be deleted from the library if it was worth the effort. An example is No. 1 Song in Heaven by the Sparks, which makes me feel like drowning in melted candy. Interludes that only make sense in the context of an album also go into this category.
- 2 star goes to songs I don't dislike, but which fail to hook into my mind, so that I forget them 30 seconds after they have finished. That doesn't mean it's a bad song, but I would only play it in the context of an album or a genius playlist.
- 3 star goes to songs I like and which I would put in my playlists.
- 4 star are my favorites, outstanding songs that I would just search and play by themselves.
- 5 star are the rare songs that have a special effect on me, such as this one.
Since some time iTunes also allows ratings on an entire album. By default it calculates it from the average ratings of the songs, but I need it for with slightly different meaning:
- 1 star goes to albums I plainly dislike. There may be an outstanding song on there, but I most of it I don't like.
- 2 star goes to albums I wouldn't listen to on my iPod or iPhone, but maybe as a background soundtrack at home.
- 3 star is for a good album I like sometimes to listen from begin to end.
- 4 star is for an outstanding album. These are the ones that are synced to my iPhone. Since space is limited, I try to keep all 4-star albums below 10 GB.
- 5 star is for all-time favorites.
I do regularly review my ratings as my musical preference changes. Since this can be done on the fly on the iPhone or iPod it doesn't take too much effort. Also I have the ongoing project where I try to listen to each song at least once a year, also for adjusting the rating when necessary.
