Level 1

84 points

iTunes changing star ratings

After the most recent iTunes update (12.8.2.3 running on a 27"iMac operating on High Sierra 10.13.6 ) I found that iTunes had made two very bad changes to many of the songs in my library. First, it seems to have picked a bunch of songs at random and filled them with gray stars that I cannot remove. Second, it has taken a bunch of song that I rated manually (blue stars) and changed them up or down. For examples I've found about 50 songs so far that I had rated with 4 stars that it changed to 3 stars, and some down to 2 stars or 1 star. This includes songs I have not played in several months, so there is no chance I accidentally changed them myself. How do I fix these two scourges? I have a bunch of smart playlists based on star ratings so this is changing their content.

By the way, I have over 34,000 songs (over 572 GB of music) so trying to fix this manually is going to take a lot of time, and I don't want it being done all over again.

iMac 27", macOS 10.12

Posted on Nov 23, 2019 4:22 PM

Similar questions

30 replies

Feb 2, 2020 1:42 AM in response to Don Eccles

Yes I sync usually just a few specific playlists (the star based ones mostly) through my Mac. Just noticed this recently. Not sure when it started to happen. I went through yesterday and reset a lot of the ratings and cleared out most of the grays, so I can try to keep an eye on when it’s happening. There were many songs that lost their star rating altogether, many that changed and turned grey. a few favorites I know were 5s reduced to lower ratings.

Feb 3, 2020 6:23 AM in response to Don Eccles

So far since I reset them, I haven't noticed anything, but I'm trying things like resyncing after playing in my car more often and keeping an eye on what happens. I had guessed, based on some of the ones that were wrong, that they have been things I played in my car through Apple Music. While I haven't synced my library with Apple Music, I do sometimes play albums or songs through Apple Music in the car. Had surmised that maybe it was somehow substituting its rating for my local copy of songs I played that way. But thats just a wild guess. I'll keep an eye on some of the things you suggested too. I also just made new straight playlists of 5 stars, 4 stars, 3 stars, so I can keep an eye on whether anythings changes compared to whats in the smart playlists that are based on ratings.

Feb 3, 2020 9:23 AM in response to Don Eccles

So followup based on some of your theories and more research. I just tried sorting my library by album rating (something I never really knew existed, or ever set manually) and it seems like almost all of the ones that somehow had a rating, were also the ones whose song rating had mysteriously vanished or changed.

Don Eccles Author

Level 1

84 points

Feb 3, 2020 2:36 PM in response to John Hall3

I am sure the problem is in the iTunes app or a process that's running in conjunction with the app in some manner. For my part, here are the facts that push me that way:

I am using iTunes 12.8.2.3 on High Sierra 10.13.6.
I do not use Apple Music or Apple Match; the reason I stopped using Apple Match was because it kept changing my metadata (typically year of release).
All my music is stored on iTunes in the form of purchased and imported-from-CD files, no ripped bootlegs or illegal downloads.
I only play music from an iPod classic (with rare exceptions) which I sync manually with iTunes via a wired connection.
I don't sync wirelessly even though those options exist for my iPhone and iPad.
All ratings are done only in iTunes itself, never on a play device.
I have a huge library (almost 35, 000 tracks) though some of that includes voice memos automatically transferred from the iPhone.
All albums have been manually set to automatic rating of zero.
All tracks were manually set to zero and ratings were being re-applied manually.

So since this started, I have been screenshotting each page in iTunes as I get the correct ratings reapplied and saving them to compare with the library as it stands while I rebuild it. This is how I am catching when it changes and which ones have changed, and to what. Most of the time it's taking 3/4/5 star tracks and setting them to zero, but not always. Sometimes it re-rates a track from 5 to 3 or 2 to 5 or 3 to 1 or whatever. So far there has been no discernible pattern but I keep saving data and hope to stumble onto something soon.

Mar 22, 2020 1:59 PM in response to John Hall3

After clearing out my ratings the last time they were all swapped I made a backup playlist of My Top Rated at the time but annoyingly that won't seem to transfer over to my Phone (I'm syncing using iCloud Music Library now).

Thanks for the useful updates Don and John, I'll continue to follow the thread!

May 17, 2020 8:56 PM in response to Don Eccles

Well all had been going well for a couple months. No more missing or changed ratings; once i synced my library to the cloud and fixed all the initial problems that caused, I was able to add any song from Apple Music, rate it, and have it show in my ratings based playlists.

But now, all of the sudden most of my main playlists are suddenly missing form my iphone. The 1 star and 2 star lists are there (basically the songs I rarely play). A few other random artist based lists and subscribed lists are there. But my most important 3, 4 & 5 start lists, as well as my Cloud list that contains all the new songs I have added from Apple Music are just gone. Still there on my computer, just gone from my phone.

So I guess another bunch of hours ahead of my trying to figure out WTF Apple Music is up to now.

Oh to have iTunes 1.0 back again.

May 18, 2020 4:08 AM in response to John Hall3

Yes - this has happened to me too. I have some playlists on my phone but a lot of them have disappeared. I've been tracking one smart playlist (which has tracks from a certain year which are rated above 4 stars). It's on my Mac but won't appear on my 'phone. Showing the iCloud Music Library status column I can see it contains two tracks which are only "uploaded" rather than "matched" (even though Music has correctly matched the right artwork for each track and all metadata matches the track in Apple Music). So I'm wondering if for some reason that's what's causing the playlists to stop syncing over to my phone.

Jun 10, 2020 12:29 AM in response to Don Eccles

I'm dealing with this also. Like others, I have smart playlists based on 4 stars and up and 5 stars. Great way to organize music. Except that icloud match wipes out the ratings, and also often doesn't sync them between devices on the same apple ID. Has anyone found a solution to this? Thanks.

Jun 24, 2020 2:05 PM in response to Don Eccles

Thanks Don. It also wipes out artwork where I've added it to songs and albums. It's very disappointing on Apple's part. One day, someone will make an ecosystem that is as good in the good ways as Apple, but not so ineptly controlling in the bad ways. Or maybe Apple will reform. Here's hoping.

Don Eccles Author

Level 1

84 points

Jun 30, 2020 11:38 AM in response to jimdhdhdhdh

When an album has been re-released with different cover art, or when there is a conflict between the art in different releases, Apple will substitute the one in its library for any one you might supply. This is also true for tracks, where there is a difference between US and other countries. For example, “Music That You Can Dance To” by Sparks lacks one of the tracks from the original US physical media release; the version on iTunes has a different track from one of the European releases. If you try to upload your album with iTunes Match, it replaces it in your library with the other track. This is very frustrating and was one reason I had to stop using it.

Jul 26, 2020 2:59 PM in response to Don Eccles

Its really just a constant battle trying to keep iTunes from destroying your carefully curated libraries. Thought I had the star issue and the Apple Music sync issues mostly worked out. Today I looked closer, and there are another couple dozen songs that suddenly have no star ratings, and also show with a broken cloud, meaning they won't sync to any of my devises through Apple Music. These were all songs I purchased as some point through Apple and last time I sorted this out were fine.. I COULD add them back to my library through Apple Music, and rerate them, but then I will lose my playcounts, and will have to delete the now broken version I paid for, or have duplicates to deal with. Just so annoying.

Don Eccles Author

Level 1

84 points

Dec 17, 2019 9:41 PM in response to turingtest2

See my recent post about the problem returning. This is something that should not be happening

turingtest2

Level 10

278,187 points

Dec 18, 2019 3:55 AM in response to Don Eccles

Don Eccles wrote:

See my recent post about the problem returning. This is something that should not be happening

Quite. 😕

tt2

Don Eccles Author

Level 1

84 points

Apr 13, 2020 3:08 PM in response to Don Eccles

I did hear from another person who is having this trouble too. However, they are syncing their iPhone with the Windows version of iTunes, not the Mac version. So whatever is causing this is in code that is common to both versions. Also, I’ve seen the crash happen now for three days in a row, and two of those three days it wiped out exactly the same track ratings but separated by a day, i.e. on day 1 it wiped out 34 tracks, on day 2 it wiped out 15 different tracks, and on day 3 it wiped out again the same 34 tracks as day one and nothing else. This leads me to think it has something to do with checking an older version of the library on startup and not the latest version with the newer ratings. More work on this continues.

Don Eccles Author

Level 1

84 points

Jul 26, 2020 3:13 PM in response to John Hall3

There is a way to fix the play count issue through a script. You can manually change count back to the old value if you have a record of it first by the use of this:

https://dougscripts.com/itunes/2019/10/updated-new-play-count-v4-0/

As for star ratings being zeroed out, I still have no fix from Apple (or for star ratings being changed) except to reduce syncing with external devices and/or not closing and opening the iTunes library any more than necessary. The best way to deal with this is to open another case with Apple about this alongside mine. The more people who report this, the faster Apple will feel impelled to deal with it.

This thread has been closed by the system or the community team. You may vote for any posts you find helpful, or search the Community for additional answers.

iTunes changing star ratings