iTunes changing star ratings

My case is still open with Apple, though for some reason I have not heard back from my advisor since before the Super Bowl. However, I have been screenshotting everything in iTunes as I re-rate the tracks, album by album, and when a wipeout occurs I can go back and quickly fix everything. A couple of things I have noticed. First, when a wipeout occurs, it almost always happens when I plug in my iPod to sync (never so far with an iPhone or iPad), and only when I have listened to music on that iPod (I have 2). Second, it does not wipe out ratings every time I sync; there is still no discernible pattern beyond the fact that it is more likely to happen when the launch of iTunes by connecting an iPod takes place—but even then it’s not absolute. Third, it tends to go back and wipe out ratings from albums I have most recently re-rated ( after setting my library completely back to zero). It mostly wipes out four and five star ratings but will sometimes zero out a lesser rated track. It also tends to pick on some albums and tracks more than others for unknown reasons. Finally, it occasionally has a mega-wipeout where it not only resets tracks to zero, it actually changes the ratings of tracks (such as 4 to 2 or 1 to 5). It also will assign ratings to tracks I had left at zero, as well as sometimes moving forward in the library to sprinkle random ratings on tracks I have not yet reached in the re-rating process. These are much harder to spot and so I have had to do a lot of special tracking to find and fix all of this.

I will post again when I have more info.

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.

I just finished cleaning up from a really horrifying crash, which took me a week to completely restore. I’ve learned that there’s two different versions of this rating change behavior.

The first and more common (for me) kind is when plugging in an iPod causes iTunes to selectively erase the ratings of a few tracks that were recently rated. Since the rebuilding of my rating system involves listening to each track individually, it is fairly easy to track. By keeping a running count of how many total tracks have ratings assigned, I can tell when stuff has reset to unrated and the screenshots make it easy to go back and fix them. The deeper I get into the ratings, the more that window shifts to follow those recent tracks.

The second and rarer sort of crash is when it goes through the entire library and changes hundreds of tracks in various ways. In addition to wiping some tracks to unrated, it changes star ratings around either at random or in pairs. For example, if four given tracks in order were rated 4, 3, 2, 1 it might swap them to 1, 2, 3, 4. It also assigns seemingly random ratings to unrated tracks, and it does this not only for “past” unrated tracks (one’s I’ve listened to but decided a zero rating was appropriate) but also “future” tracks that have not been listened to at all since I wiped the entire library to unrated in December of 2019 so I could start the rebuilding process fresh. I can tell, too, by looking at the “future” tracks that the ratings are not anything like they were in the past, meaning they are either random or they are based on some algorithm that has nothing to do my tastes based on prior ratings or play counts, etc.

I still have yet to hear from my Apple advisor so work continues on rebuilding and trying to isolate a definable cause.

One thing I can add is that the process by which it decides to alter ratings is not random but instead is based on some sort of algorithm. Even with automatic ratings turned off, there are too many patterns for it to be coincidence.

First, it never adds ratings to unplayed songs. I have about sixty-odd albums in iTunes that I have not yet listened to and not once through multiple crashes has it ever assigned a star rating to an unplayed track. Given the number of crashes I have had since December and the ratio of played to unplayed tracks it is highly unlikely that they have all been safe at random.

Second, it tends to pick on certain tracks over and over. While the specific tracks altered vary with each crash, the spreadsheet I have been keeping with a log of these issues shows a definite repetition, especially the mega-crashes where it changes ratings as well as wiping stuff out. Some tracks have been screwed up by iTunes at least 5 times now.

Finally, it tends to swap the ratings of adjacent tracks more often than altering them out of the blue. If a certain track on an album is rated 5 stars and the following track is rated 3 stars, for example, after a mega-crash the 5 star track will get changed to 3 stars and the 3 star track will get changed to 5 stars. Again, this pattern shows up far more than chance would dictate.

Keeping screenshots of everything after it is rated is the only way I have found to put things back, and the more tracks I rate the longer the rebuild process takes. After 6 months I am barely over 10% of the way to getting the entire library fixed, and even at this stage a mega-crash takes a week of solid work to rebuild.

My Apple case worker told me that he was going to forward this link to the engineers, but I suspect opening a case on your own will add weight to the process. The more people who complain and open cases, the more attention Apple will give it.

iCloud Match is probably changing your other metadata too, so you will want to check that. Year was the most common one for me, which is why I stopped using it. I tried to call my case worker today but his mailbox is full so I cannot leave him a message but he knows other people are chiming in on this thread and has said he will let Engineering know about the issue. I then called Apple Support and tried to get an update but my call was misrouted twice and finally dropped, so I will just wait a few days and try again

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.

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.

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