Is there a way to show songs that have been auto-rated (rated based on album and not individually) ?

Create a Smart Playlist that shows all the albums with an album rating.

Tap on iTunes' top bar menu:

• File/New/Smart Playlist (or Ctrl+Alt+N)
• the panel that opens up will look like the one below:

• change the Artist drop-down option to Album Rating (this will change the "contains" box automatically)
• change the second drop down (which will now say is), to is greater than (the third box will then show five blue stars)
• tap to the left of the first star to make the stars empty, as shown below:

• your panel should now look like the one below:

(That's Album Rating is greater than zero stars.)

• click the OK button to finish
• the view that appears will probably be in Playlist view. Use the top bar menu to change it to View/View As/Songs. This way, you can add the album rating column to the columns, which allows you to confirm that the album is rated. Right-click a column header and choose Album Rating from the pop-up menu:

• if you click on the playlist name (in my screenshot, it's Playlist 5) to highlight it so that you can change the name:

podonnell wrote:

It looks like there are 100+ albums that have been rated, but I am positive I have never manually done so. This is a question outside the context of this post, but what would cause this? Rating a certain amount of songs, and then it applies the average to the album?

It's not out of context at all. At the risk of opening a can of worms on this subject, I can confirm that iTunes has demonstrated that it automatically assigns album ratings based on the rating you assign to a song on the album. I don't want it to assign album ratings either.

You might think I'm being long-winded in that reply, but believe me, it caused a lot of controversy when I raised this as a problem, several years ago. There is no doubt that iTunes will self-assign album ratings. What I have never got to the bottom of is why it happens to some, but not all users, to a particular user for a while then it ceases (me), while others continue or begin to have the problem. If I explain my own experience, it might help you understand what is happening (but not necessary why). How you stop it is another matter altogether.

Here's an example:

Two points to note:

1. while I was documenting this I realised that some or all of the unwanted symptoms are still happening in my iTunes Library
2. fifty-nine percent (yes, that's 59%) of the songs in my library have an album rating, even though I do not assign (and you will see why I don't want*) album ratings

• • consider the screenshot below and notice that some, but not all songs on (what appears to be) one album have an album rating of 4 stars:

• they all appear to be from the same album, so why only some of the tracks? In fact, it's CD1 and CD2 of the same album (note the Disc No. column to the left of the album title column). As the album title states CD 1 or CD 2, that has separated the album. So that explains this discrepancy:

• Apple has decided that because I have given a 4-star rating to just one track (the blue one for the Talking Heads track), it (Apple) has given the complete CD 1 album a rating of 4-stars. The greyed-out stars indicate that it's an automated rating, not my personal rating

You might ask why this matters if I don't use the album rating. Why not simply ignore it? And this is where it becomes even more odd. Previously, but not today as I test this:

• if I assigned a rating to one, perhaps two tracks on an album, iTunes would assign an average rating to the complete album - (*this is why I don't like what happens) - it would then also assign that average rating to all the non-rated songs on the album. This would cause a song I had not rated to be added to my Smart Playlist of star-rated songs
• for example, I have a Smart Playlist of 3-star rated songs. If I gave a 3-star rating to two songs on a ten-track album, but I did not rate any of the remaining songs, iTunes would give the album an album rating of 3-stars. This also gave the non-rated songs a rating (in grey) of 3-stars, which caused them to be placed in my playlist of 3-star rated songs, even though I didn't like the songs enough to consider rating them

You couldn't make this up!

And how do I know this was an average rating? Because if I gave a 4-star rating to one track and a 2-star rating to a second track, iTunes assigns an album rating of 3-stars to the complete album (the average of 2 and 4). However, even that's not correct! This is where the real controversy began.

Other users here argued with me about this:

• the average rating of the two tracks is 3. That is, 2 plus 4 equals six, divided by the two occurrences of a rating, which gives and average of 3
• if one decides to assign an average to all the tracks on the album, then one has to add together all the ratings given to all the occurrences
• this means that the correct formula is 0+0+0+2+0+0+0+4+0+0 which equals 6, divided by the number of occurrences, which is 10 (the number of tacks on the album) which equals 0.6, rounded up to 1. So the true average raing dfor th album is 1, not 3

This demonstrates that averages are abstract, not absolute. One should not rely upon an average to indicate sometime specific. Averages are an indicator only.

I have to go out now, so I'll end this post for the time being. Feel free to respnd to what I've witter up to now. I'll try to add to it later today.

I have survived a visit to the dentist.

(In my previous post the sentence So the true average raing dfor th album is 1, not 3 should read So the true average rating for the album is 1, not 3. Unbelievably, I was in a hurry to get to my dentist, hence that and the other typing errors towards the end of the post.)

But of course, I doubt that I would give a rating of 3 or even 1 to an album with only one track rated. As stated, others here argued with me as they believe that dividing the sum of the ratings by only those tracks rated 1 or more is correct. I remain convinced that this is incorrect.

Look at the screenshots below to see what happens today:

• • none of the twelve tracks are rated:

• • with one track rated as 4 stars, an album rating of 4 (grey) stars is (incorrectly) assigned:

• • next, with two tracks rated, one as 4 star and the other as 2 star, the album rating drops to 3 stars (the average of the two tracks, but incorrectly assigned to all tracks):

• • now I give a rating of 1 star to a third track, which causes the album rating to drop again, this time to 2 stars:

To be precise, the average rating of only the three tracks with ratings is:

7 (the 1, 4 & 2 stars) divided by the three occurrences being considered, equals 2.33, rounded (down) to 2 stars. But once again, if the average result is to be assigned to all the tracks on the album, then the divisor must be the total number of tracks, not just the ones that have been rated. So the correct average should be 1+0+4+0+0+0+0+0+0++2+0=7 and then divide the 7 by 12=0.5833 (that is 7/12=0.5833), rounded (up) to 1.

Others here have defended this apparent error, saying that the remaining tracks are "not rated". Quite apart from the fact that the maths is wrong, both they and (apparently) Apple have failed to take into account that users think in the following terms:

if a track is not rated, it is for one of two reasons:

• • • I have not yet rated the track
    • I dislike the track but there is no option to rate a track as zero stars

One only has to look at reviews online to read uses who state that they were unable to rate something as 0 (zero) despite the fact that that is what they wanted to do

• • next, a 5 star rating to a track, which bumps the album rating up to 3 stars:

I tried to alter the album rating manually. I can't. I tried various methods, but I cannot manually assign, change or remove an album rating in my up-to-date version of iTunes (12.13.1.3).

Let's suppose that I decide that all the remaining tracks on the album are (in my opinion) worth 2 stars. In other words, I like now more of the album's content and I've rated the remaining tracks to reflect this. Surely, this means that the album rating must be higher?

Not in Apple world apparently. I've rated more of the album positively, but the album rating has gone down.

Luckily enough from my point of view, iTunes no longer adds that average album rating to the individual songs (as it used to do).

Yes, turingtest2 has written several scripts for different tasks and if I recall one of them is about the album rating issue.

I hope that turingtest2 would be among the first to agree that the issue should not be occurring in the first place.

In the meantime, I hope that you now have a bit of insight that might help you find a suitable way (for you) to achieve what you want.

What more can I say?

I have also not been able to assign an album rating to an album with only one track. This means that I'm curious to understand how you have tracks in your library with an album rating in blue stars.