Bob Becker1

Q: Removing Album Ratings??

I've looked through all the resources I can find, but I still don't have an answer. I'm using iTunes version 12.4.3.1 on a Windows 10 computer. Recently I noticed that my smart playlists contained music I didn't want in the list. I've discovered that over 7000 songs of about 20,000 have album ratings that I never set. Now, I know Apple has seen fit to magically add these ratings, but I'm wondering if there's some way to remove them. The oddest thing is that half the ratings are black and half are gray. I know there was a time when I could rate an album, but I can no longer find a way to do this. Any suggestions will be appreciated (step by step directions would be very helpful, as I'm not the brightest of bulbs) . As a temporary work-around I've rated the songs that should not have a rating as a 1-star to keep them out of my playlists, but I really don't think that should be necessary.

 

Thanks in advance.

Posted on Sep 3, 2016 2:51 PM

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Q: Removing Album Ratings??

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  • by turingtest2,

    turingtest2 turingtest2 Sep 3, 2016 5:08 PM in response to Bob Becker1
    Level 10 (85,076 points)
    iTunes
    Sep 3, 2016 5:08 PM in response to Bob Becker1

    Black stars are manual ratings. You can edit ratings in the most views where they can be seen, with the exception of the Album Rating column in the songs view where they're not active. Enable and expand the artwork column instead, when it is is wide enough there is an active rating that you can edit.

     

    Grey stars are auto ratings that are generated in response to manual ratings. Manually rating tracks of an album will auto rate the album if it isn't already rated. Manually rating an album will auto rate any unrated tracks.

     

    You can suppress auto ratings with my scripts ClearAlbumAutoRating and/or ClearTrackAutoRating which set manual values of 1%. A rating of none enables the auto rating behaviour where unrated tracks are given an auto-rating that matches the album rating, and an unrated album is given a rating that reflects the rounded average of any manually rated tracks. There are corresponding scripts to reset things if you want to restore auto ratings later.

     

    In recent months there seems to be another issue where syncing after tracks have been rated on a device may cause an album to gain a full rating in iTunes. Hopefully Apple are aware of this issue and will resolve in a later build... maybe.

     

    Use iTunes Feedback if you want to make suggestions to Apple.

     

    tt2

  • by Bob Becker1,

    Bob Becker1 Bob Becker1 Sep 4, 2016 7:02 AM in response to turingtest2
    Level 2 (169 points)
    Apple Music
    Sep 4, 2016 7:02 AM in response to turingtest2

    Thank you for your response. Unfortunately, I cannot find a view that shows stars, other than in a song view column. Can you please step me through a way to actually see the stars next to the album art? Sorry for being such a dunce.Screenshot01.jpg

  • by Bob Becker1,

    Bob Becker1 Bob Becker1 Sep 4, 2016 7:08 AM in response to Bob Becker1
    Level 2 (169 points)
    Apple Music
    Sep 4, 2016 7:08 AM in response to Bob Becker1

    BTW, your script works great for the grayed album ratings. Thanks! Now, I just need access to the black stars. ;-)

  • by Bob Becker1,

    Bob Becker1 Bob Becker1 Sep 4, 2016 11:34 AM in response to turingtest2
    Level 2 (169 points)
    Apple Music
    Sep 4, 2016 11:34 AM in response to turingtest2

    Any chance you could write a script that would change black album ratings to none? ;-)  I absolutely cannot see a way to edit those ratings. I'm wondering if Apple hasn't recently deleted this feature. I have version 12.4.3.1.

     

    Thanks again for the ClearAlbumAutoRating script.

  • by turingtest2,

    turingtest2 turingtest2 Sep 4, 2016 1:52 PM in response to Bob Becker1
    Level 10 (85,076 points)
    iTunes
    Sep 4, 2016 1:52 PM in response to Bob Becker1

    You can edit line 165 from:

     

        Updateable=(.AlbumRatingKind=1)  ' Only process AutoRated tracks

     

    to:

     

        Updateable=True  ' Process all tracks

     

    And it will work on the black ratings too.

     

     

    You may need to change the setting Edit > Preferences > General > Ratings > Stars & Loves to reveal the stars between the artwork and the heart in the image you posted earlier.

     

    tt2

  • by Bob Becker1,

    Bob Becker1 Bob Becker1 Sep 4, 2016 2:21 PM in response to turingtest2
    Level 2 (169 points)
    Apple Music
    Sep 4, 2016 2:21 PM in response to turingtest2

    Thanks for your response. Your last line was the answer! Don't know how that setting changed. I don't think I did it. Much appreciated!

  • by turingtest2,

    turingtest2 turingtest2 Sep 4, 2016 2:34 PM in response to Bob Becker1
    Level 10 (85,076 points)
    iTunes
    Sep 4, 2016 2:34 PM in response to Bob Becker1

    You're welcome.

     

    tt2

  • by Rysz,

    Rysz Rysz Sep 5, 2016 11:51 AM in response to Bob Becker1
    Level 7 (20,157 points)
    iTunes
    Sep 5, 2016 11:51 AM in response to Bob Becker1

    Yyou already received the solution from tt2, but just to respond to your question here...

     

    iTunes > Preferences > General > Ratings > change this to Stars, or Stars & Ratings.