Itunes automatic rating

polydorus posted the answer in this thread
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1786573&tstart=0



+You can remove an album rating by clicking just to the left of the leftmost star.+
+At first it looks as though you have only changed one track, but if you navigate to another album and back you will find all the ratings have gone.+

You're right! I can't get that work either!

Oh well, false alarm.

I could get it to work in 8.02 (haven't tried it in 8.1 yet). I had to click to the right to change the stars from hollow to solid. Then click at the left a few times, and move away from the album in between.

I only had 5 albums (out of >300) that were rated though, I don't know how they get rated.

Message was edited by: hmacross

I just managed to mess up a bunch of ratings playing with it in 8.02.
The song ratings went black for an entire album. How you explained it.... +move away from the album in between+ ....I had the rating and album rating columns right next to each other, and it did odd things when I moved away towards the song rating column.

Seems pretty buggy!

I thought I was going crazy! There was hollow stars in the album rating and solid stars on the songs. I clicked to the left in album, and those stars when black and songs ones went hollow.

Programmer lingo - its not a bug, its a feature. LOL

I might send some feedback about this. It doesn't matter if the rating & album rating columns are next to each other. Happens in both 8.0 and 8.1.



I'm not too fussed about it, though. My playlists are set up to use just song ratings (not album ratings) so I don't see how it really matters.


I am also not going to post that workaround again ; )

hmacross wrote:
I don't know how they get rated.

the hollow stars for albums aren't exactly ratings...i'm pretty sure it's the album's average rating, based on the ratings of the songs in that album. to rate the album yourself, just click on the star rating that u want, and it'll rate that album whatever u want.

unfortunately, i don't know how to turn this off. i'm fine with the automatic rating, though...

You can't turn it off. It's a feature. The most you can do is not display album ratings.
itunes menu > View > View Options
Uncheck the box for Album Rating.

If you actually assign a rating yourself, it is a solid star. If iTunes assigns a rating it is a hollow star.
If you have three songs rated, iTunes will rate the album (with hollow stars) based on those three ratings.
All other songs will be blank rating (since you have not rated tehm).
If you rate the album yourself, iTunes will assign all other unrated songs the same rating (hollow stars) you gave the album.
If you click the left of the fist album rating star (to rate it no stars), it will jump to that for a moment then go back to the average rating based on the ratings you gave individual songs.

I agree there should be a preference to turn off the iTunes assigned rating. Or an option to use your rating or the iTunes assigned rating.

but the song with album rating will still be included in the smart playlist.
That's the annoying thing.

songallery wrote:
but the song with album rating will still be included in the smart playlist.
That's the annoying thing.

I'm just now being bitten by the same annoying thing. Making this automatic rating a "feature" for my own good, that I can't turn off, seems so much like the m.o. of some other monolithic-main-competitor tech company. :/

I just had a look at this again in iTunes 8.2.

There is now an album rating column as well as a track rating column. You can use the album rating column or go into list view and open up the artwork column to the left. Underneath the artwork image there will be a series of dots if the album is unrated or stars.

Starting with an unrated album, I clicked on one of the dots and star appeared and also in the album rating column in the library. When I clicked to the left of the stars (under the artwork) the stars disappeared and also in the artwork column.

I found that if I used the album rating column, the stars only refresh if you leave the current window.
Album ratings appear as open stars in the track rating column, the track rating is shown as closed stars.

It all seems to work except for the annoyance of not refreshing unless you leave the current window when using the album rating column.

This was something that just stung me. Using a smart playlist, I only load songs onto my ipod that have a 1 star rating. Just a quick way of being able to take songs or albums off, or add ones quickly. But I just went to update my list (get some old now boring songs off), and after making some tracks zero ratings, the songs wouldn't remove it self from the list.

If I went into "Grid" view, and then "Albums", and highlighted all albums, then the "Album Rating" option showed up in the right-click menu. From there I made them all zero ratings. I was now able to go back and adjust individual songs correctly, and they dropped out of my listing.

I can see some people liking this "Feature". But i'm certainly in the boat of people wanting this as something you can turn off if you want...

Hope this method works for others.

This was something that just stung me. Using a smart playlist, I only load songs onto my ipod that have a 1 star rating. Just a quick way of being able to take songs or albums off, or add ones quickly. But I just went to update my list (get some old now boring songs off), and after making some tracks zero ratings, the songs wouldn't remove it self from the list.

If I went into "Grid" view, and then "Albums", and highlighted all albums, then the "Album Rating" option showed up in the right-click menu. From there I made them all zero ratings. I was now able to go back and adjust individual songs correctly, and they dropped out of my listing.

I can see some people liking this "Feature". But i'm certainly in the boat of people wanting this as something you can turn off if you want...

Hope this method works for others.