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Album ratings and clear stars are ruining my playlists. Help turn them off.

I understand that if you give an album an album rating, it will give all unrated songs on that album clear stars based on the album rating. Because of this, I have not rated any of my albums, since all of my playlists are based off of the song ratings.

All of a sudden, now when I rate a single song, it puts clear stars in the album rating column, and ALSO assigns clear stars for all of the unrated tracks on that album. It is ruining all of my playlists.

Is there any way to turn off the album ratings, or turn off the clear stars, or do something to get rid of this, rather than going through manually and adjusting each song individually?

ipod classic, Windows XP

Posted on Mar 15, 2010 9:26 AM

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12 replies

Mar 15, 2010 10:14 AM in response to markblasco

No, album rating happens automatically, so you can't disable that feature, per se, but you can go to "Options" on the "View" menu and hide that column. Just remove the "album rating" column (show the old track "rating", if you want to rate individual tracks) from your view and ignore it.

For those unfamiliar with the "album rating" column, this is a feature that you can either either (a) specify the explicit "album rating" you gave to the album (in which case it shows up with solid stars for every track on that album); or (b) in the absence of an explicit rating, the "album rating" becomes an average of the track-level "rating" for the individual tracks you rated (and this implicit album rating then appears with empty stars).

But, anyway, if you don't like "album rating" why not just hide it and forget it? But if you want to explicitly set the "album rating" for some albums and see that rating in your view, if you show that column, then you'll have to deal with seeing the implicit album ratings as well as the explicit album ratings. (At least it visually differentiates between the two types of ratings.)

Message was edited by: Rob Ryan

Mar 15, 2010 10:37 AM in response to markblasco

Maybe I was not clear when I first explained it. The problem is not that it is showing the clear stars for album rating. The problem is that it is now auto-starring the songs, even if I do not add in an album rating.

For example, let's say I have the latest album by Scene of Action, with no songs rated. If I rank one of the songs 4 stars, it is giving the album a rating of 4 clear stars, and it is now also giving all of the rest of the songs a rating of 4 clear stars. In essence, by rating one song, it is now assigning ratings to all of the other songs on that album, which is ruining all of my playlists.

Mar 15, 2010 11:03 AM in response to markblasco

Is there anyway to make itunes recognize the difference between clear stars and filled stars when making smart playlists? This may work to make things work for me.

As for an example of how things are not working right now, I have a playlist that is just unrated music, so that if I feel like rating some of the newer songs I added in, I can just load that playlist, and everything in there has no ratings. Now, some of the albums that are mostly unrated are not showing up in that playlist, because instead of all of the unrated songs being blank, they all have clear stars next to them.

And just to make sure I am being very clear on this, I have NOT used the album rating at all, those stars are clear as well.

Mar 15, 2010 11:07 AM in response to markblasco

For example, let's say I have the latest album by Scene of Action, with no songs rated. If I rank one of the songs 4 stars, it is giving the album a rating of 4 clear stars, and it is now also giving all of the rest of the songs a rating of 4 clear stars. In essence, by rating one song, it is now assigning ratings to all of the other songs on that album, which is ruining all of my playlists.

Are you doing this rating in the column labeled "Album rating" or the column labeled "Rating"? (Sounds like you are correctly doing it in the "rating" column, or otherwise you wouldn't be seeing clear stars.)

And are these clear stars showing up in the "Album rating" column or the "Rating" column? (As I understand it, clear stars only show up in the "Album rating" column.)

And are your playlists (presumably "smart playlists" with "live updating") using the "Rating" field, or the "Album rating" field? (If you use the "Rating" field, it will ignore the "Album rating" column and shouldn't be affected by clear stars showing up in the "Album rating" field.)

Sorry to belabor the point, but if you do everything in the "Rating" column, and ignore the "Album rating" column altogether, you should not be seeing any clear stars at all in the "Rating", much less affecting your smart playlists that relying solely on the "Rating" column.

But if you are saying that you are seeing these clear stars in the "Rating" column, then that's a real problem! Maybe you can show both the "Rating" column and the "Album rating" column, try setting the "Rating" column for a track or two, and maybe you can describe what you see in both the "Rating" and the "Album rating" columns.

Mar 15, 2010 11:23 AM in response to markblasco

Is there anyway to make itunes recognize the difference between clear stars and filled stars when making smart playlists? This may work to make things work for me.

If you use "album rating" field in your playlist, it will use the clear stars that appear in that column. If you use "rating" field in your playlist, it should ignore the clear stars that appear in the "album rating" column.
As for an example of how things are not working right now, I have a playlist that is just unrated music, so that if I feel like rating some of the newer songs I added in, I can just load that playlist, and everything in there has no ratings. Now, some of the albums that are mostly unrated are not showing up in that playlist, because instead of all of the unrated songs being blank, they all have clear stars next to them.

When you say "unrated music", what precisely is the rule you use? When I set up a playlist with the rule "Rating is less than '1 star'", even albums with clear stars in the "album rating" field show up (as long as the individual track doesn't bear a rating, obviously). But when I change that rule to say "Album rating is less than '1 star'", then as soon as I rate one song, the entire album is removed from the playlist.
And just to make sure I am being very clear on this, I have NOT used the album rating at all, those stars are clear as well.

Ok, I think this may answer some of the questions in my previous post. I infer that you are seeing clear stars in the "rating" column, not just the "album rating" column. Can you confirm this? If that's the case, then this is truly a mystery. I was hoping the problem was an innocent confusion between the "album rating" and the "rating" columns.

Mar 15, 2010 11:30 AM in response to markblasco

I do all of my rating on my ipod, not within iTunes, and all of the albums have clear stars, so I know that I am not setting the album rating. The clear stars are showing up in both the "album rating" and the "rating" column.

My unrated music playlist just selects songs with no rating ("rating" is equal to "....."

I will try updating to 9.0.3 and see if that fixes it.

Mar 15, 2010 11:43 AM in response to markblasco

I do all of my rating on my ipod, not within iTunes, and all of the albums have clear stars, so I know that I am not setting the album rating.

My mistake. I just assumed you were rating in iTunes.
The clear stars are showing up in both the "album rating" and the "rating" column.

This behavior may be fixed when you upgrade. I saw posts venting about this problem in prior versions.
My unrated music playlist just selects songs with no rating ("rating" is equal to "....."

Great.
I will try updating to 9.0.3 and see if that fixes it.

Hopefully that will fix it for you! Definitely let me know.

Jul 18, 2010 11:45 AM in response to r_dizzle

i'm having a similar problem. i have plenty of album rating clear/empty stars that do not show up on the song ratings. but there are still about 20 tracks where there is a clear star that i would seriously like to get rid of. i need this because i often rate songs with one star then delete them. but now deleting them becomes very hard because i have to pick and choose which one star tracks to throw away because some are empty and some are full and i sort the songs by star. when i choose not to view album rating that does not help, besides there are hundreds of songs where there is an album rating and no star shows up on the song rating, but there are still these 15 stubborn songs that can't get the message. here is a screen shot of what my itunes looks like. as you can see there are tracks where the album rating is clear and the song rating is blank, then there are some where it is reverse.

also i do not have time to go through and adjust the album rating. this is itunes fault. they are the ones that messed everything up. my itunes was fine until itunes came up with this lame idea.

i'm using itunes 9.2

http://i87.photobucket.com/albums/k137/kylefoley76/Picture1-18.png

Jul 18, 2010 12:12 PM in response to kyle76

The hollow/white stars are auto ratings.
The solid/black stars are your rating.

In the picture you linked to, everything is correct. You could better tell what is going on if you enabled the Artwork column and this sorted by Album or Artist to group by Album. Or tun on the *Column browser* and select only one album.
With the highlighted track, you have rated the album one (black) star so all songs you have not rated on that album are automatically rated (hollow/white star) one star.

You have rated at least one song by Alan Mandel with three stars, because the Album rating is shown as three hollow/white stars.

If you rate a song, the album will be auto rated (unless you have rated the album also).
If you rate an album, all songs will be auto rated (unless you have rated the songs also).

Album ratings and clear stars are ruining my playlists. Help turn them off.

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