Ratings & Smart Playlists Explained

Ratings are dead useful, when it comes to a massive music library. Even if you don’t like organising music as well as I do, I suggest you rate all of your songs. The reason is simple – you probably won’t remember all the good songs you have in your music collection. Thing is, once you rate your music, all you need to do, is use the built-in auto playlists in most media players to find your best music.

I’ve gone a step further, and in iTunes, created some more smart playlists, with parameters like 4 & 5 star rated songs added in the last month, which basically gives me a list of all the songs I recently added, which I liked a lot. It’s really helpful, especially if you’re portable music player has very limited memory, as compared to the size of your music collection, and you don’t want to shuffle-sync music to it. Just make some special playlists, and sync them. It should make a world of difference.

Making smart playlists is very easy. I’ll explain the procedure for iTunes and Windows Media Player

iTunes

1. Start iTunes. Locate the small ‘+’ button at the bottom left. That’s used for creating playlists. Press Shift. It’ll turn into a ‘gear’ icon, which means that if you click it now, a smart playlist will be created. Alternatively, press Ctrl + Alt + N.
2. In this new window, you can describe the conditions that should be met for songs to be added to the playlist. For example, to make a playlist with only 4 & 5 star songs added in the last month, here are the steps.
   1. Select the leftmost drop down menu, and select Rating.
   2. In the second drop down menu, select is greater than.
   3. In the rating field on the right, select 3 stars.
      This means that all songs rated more than 3 stars i.e. 4 & 5, will be added. Next, we need to specify the ‘Date Added’ condition.
   4. Click on the small ‘+’ next to the rating field to add a new condition.
   5. In the leftmost drop down, select Date Added.
   6. In the second drop down, select is in the last.
   7. Type 1 in the space provided, and select months in the last drop down.
   8. Finally, select OK. You’re done!

You can play around with the range of options provided, to create a smart plYou might notice a some other buttons in the same window, such as ‘Limit to x items’. That’s used if you don’t want all the songs from your library that match the conditions.

Windows Media Player 11/12

1. In the Library view, select the drop down next to the button labelled Create Playlist in the bar at the top. Select Create auto playlist.
2. Give your playlist a name, and then proceed to add conditions to be matched. I’ll give the same example I used in iTunes – to create a playlist with 4 & 5 star rated songs added in the last month.
3. Click on the ‘+’ under Music and select My Rating from the drop-down menu.
4. In the line created above, make sure the text is My rating is at least 4 stars. You can click on the underlined text to change it.
5. Clik on the ‘+’ button once more, and this time select ‘Date Added’.
6. Make sure the text is ‘Date Added to My Library is after after last 30 days‘.
7. Click OK and you’re done.

Thing is, ratings vary from person to person. I came up with my own little simple system for rating music, which you could consider adopting as well.

• 5/5 – The absolute best songs. When I go through a new album and rate songs, there might be none at all, or there might be quite a few (like Wolfmother). Thing is, to identify a 5 star song, ask yourself, is there anything very wrong about the song? Would you stop yourself from replaying the song a couple of times if it came up on shuffle? Is it a song that’s likely to remain one of your all-time favourites? Once you’re sure about all this, give it a 5 on 5.
• 4/5 – These songs do have replay value, but a little bit less than 5 star songs. A song gets 4 on 5, if there’s something wrong, like mildly irritating vocals, or mismatched pace. The song is definitely worth listening to again, but it’s not perfect. You won’t skip this song if it came up, and you might just replay it. If you replay it too often, consider giving it an upgrade.
• 3/5 – Ambivalence and indifference. A song which gets 3/5 is neither here nor there. There’s nothing overtly memorable about the song, but at the same time there’s nothing appallingly wrong with it. If a 3 star song came up on shuffle, you might/might not listen to it, but you wouldn’t ever replay it.
• 2/5 – Uh oh. Something’s wrong with this song. If a song irritates you, and makes you likely to skip it almost each and every time it plays, it deserves a 2/5. Reasons for 2/5 depend a lot on your personal choice. If you like metal, any pop songs you come across might fall into this category.
• 1/5 – A song rated 1 on 5 begs the question – why is it there in your collection in the first place. There are people like me, who don’t like deleting songs, so they’re just given a 1/5, so that they’re not likely to come up in a shuffle list. You can choose to either delete such songs or rate them 1 on 5. Usually they’re so bad, you skip it within a few seconds.

Now that the system’s clear, I suggest you try it out as well. I can tell you, from personal experience, that when I’m confused about what to play, I just get one of my smart playlists out and just set it to shuffle. Usually takes care of everything.

Try it out, and then consider posting you’re ratings as comments under the Music section of the blog.