I have Coverstra - one day I'll take the time to find out how to do ratings on the fly with it.

this does look like it could be pretty handy tho...

question is, does anyone ever actually remember to rate music as they listen to it while working?

baldingnerd

Or, let something else do it for you (autorate). just plug the script into iCal, and let it do the rating based on your play frequency and skip frequency (i.e. a little more quantitative... not every song in you 2000 song library will have a 5 star rating)

amielb

Or you could just right click on the iTunes icon in the dock to rate them.... Then you won't be cluttering up your menubar.

dpseal

@cave12man: I guess you could do some decent playlist filtering.... but yea, 5k songs is a little much to manually rate each one.

baldingnerd

does everyone really rate all of their songs?? i dont think ive ever even rated one of them...with over 5,000 songs thatd take a pretty long damn time...any real purpose for doing it?

cave12man

ross.m

I use You Control: Tunes, it takes up a little more room in the menubar but it's fully configurable and it's one click to rate a song instead of two clicks.

Preview Image:
[www.yousoftware.com]

Link: [www.yousoftware.com]

Z

I use sizzling keys, it's not free but lets you rate (and control itunes) with a keystroke. Ctrl + (number) rates a track from whatever app you're working in. I've rated about 80% of my 12,000 tracks this way over the past few years.

kenoyer

Umm...do you really need to install an iTunes menubar item that only does one thing? You can already do this pretty simply without switching over to iTunes. Here's how:

1. Right click the iTunes dock icon
2. Select rating
3. Select the number of stars

That's it! Oh, you can also rate songs with Quicksilver!

samuraispy

Personally I don't know how anyone functions without rating their music. My iTune currently has 22,317 songs, and over 21,500 of those songs are rated and have album art (the remaining ones are new and in a separate smart playlist to be listened to and rated at a later date).

I just use the iTune interface to rate - will have to experiment with QS a bit more. You can also rate songs on the run via your iPod (I do this at the gym with my 5.1G model) and I try to rate at least 15-20 new songs every day. If you break it into small chunks the rating process can be enjoyable.

BrotherMonk

@cave12man: I rated my 5000+ songs so that my hierarchy of smart playlists would play the songs that I like the most more frequently than the rest. I started by globally rating all songs at 3 stars then adjusting them up and down from there. As I get new music I give all the songs 5 stars (so I will hear them soon) and adjust the ratings while I am listening to them either on my iPod or in iTunes.
It really did not take that long to do.

Trix606

Or use something like SizzlingKeys (i use iTunesKeys on my PC at work) to set global hotkeys for rating. I don't use quicksilver but the global hotkeys solution is a one-keystroke, zero-click solution. The problem with the solution in this article is you still have to aim, click, aim, and click again. Since I'm a software engineer, I love that I can rate while I code without even breaking thought.

kamiikoneko

Why not simply use the iTunes' Dock menu?

ReadR

I much prefer the QS way, I followed this inspired method of handling playlists. The only difference is that I use a one star rating to mark a track as "On notice". As I am just rating the "cream of the crop" its not a pain to do and I can also do it on my iPod.

reclusivemonkey

@ross.m: that's true, autorate does take a bit of time (but I've popped it into my iCal to run every night before I shut down, so it doesn't seem to take that long...) mind you, I've also got a "New Song" playlist that I tend to listen to a lot, so my new songs get more airtime, (and therefore higher ratings) faster.

I think the key to all the discussion here: if you've got a system, and it works for you, keep at it! :)

amielb

ross.m

You Control: Tunes allows you to rate the song and control iTunes from the menu bar

blab13