Level 1

2 points

Is there a way to stop iTunes from automatically assigning album ratings?

Ever since I upgraded to Windows iTunes 12.2.1 (or maybe a version before), I've noticed that iTunes is automatically assigning album ratings to my albums.

I have a set of smart playlists that pull in songs that have no ratings, so that I can listen to them and eventually give them a rating.

Now that iTunes is giving my songs an "album rating", these playlists no longer work.

As near as I can tell, it looks like when I have a playlist on my iPhone (I've seen this with both iOS 8.3 and 8.4) with only 1 song from an album, if I rate that song with 3 stars, then the next time I sync with iTunes, the album rating for that song (and every other song on that album) will be set to 3 stars (even though typically I still haven't even listened to the other songs on the album yet).

Note that this is not the hollow or light stars that seem to get set based on an average of songs in the album. These are filled in stars.

I can go in and remove the ratings, but that's a lot to do when I've been listening to a lot of music.

so...

Is there a way to stop iTunes (or maybe it's the Music app on the iPhone) from automatically assigning these album ratings?

or is there a way to create a smart playlist that is based on just song rating and ignores album rating?

Thanks

Posted on Aug 7, 2015 10:56 PM

37 replies

turingtest2

Level 10

278,119 points

Dec 6, 2015 11:51 AM in response to cmichel42

Hmm, it should be possible to batch change multiple songs to zero stars using Get Info, but the iTunes 12 version isn't as easy to use as its predecessor, and cannot batch process album rating. If you want to force a rating of 1% regardless of the current rating/rating method you could simply use Updatable=True.

tt2

cmichel42 Author

Level 1

2 points

Dec 6, 2015 1:17 PM in response to turingtest2

Yeah, I don't see any way to set Album Rating from Get Info in iTunes 12.3.1.

I used to be able to set it from the song listing view, but that's no longer working (and it was pretty slow). I think that stopped in 12.3.

Looks like I'll have to go ahead and set album rating to 1% to clear out the album ratings.

cmichel42 Author

Level 1

2 points

Dec 6, 2015 6:07 PM in response to turingtest2

I updated the script to only update songs with .AlbumRatingKind=0 And .AlbumRating>=20 (which works for me since I've never intentionally assigned an album rating)

This fixed all the problem songs for me.

Now my smart playlists are behaving correctly (as if those songs had never been rated)

Thanks!

turingtest2

Level 10

278,119 points

Dec 11, 2015 5:46 PM in response to rip0125

rip0125 wrote:

iTunes>iTunes Preferences>General Tab>

Change "Ratings" drop-down to either "Stars" or "Stars & Loves"

This we know. Select two or more albums. Use Ctrl+I to Get Info. Rating is shown, but where can you set Album Rating? Hence the discussion of scripting solutions.

tt2

cmichel42 Author

Level 1

2 points

Dec 13, 2015 9:58 PM in response to turingtest2

Agreed.

I already have "Stars & Loves" selected in preferences.

At this point, I'd like to know:

1) How to stop iTunes from auto-assigning solid star ratings to albums. This appears to happen after assigning song ratings on my iPhone and then syncing with iTunes.

2) How to change album ratings once they've been auto-assigned. This used to be possible, but that broke recently.

As an alternative, I'd be able to do my unrated 2015 song smart playlist if I could create a smart playlists based on "song rating" and not just "rating" which uses "album rating" if song rating is not set.

In the meantime, the script to reset the album ratings worked perfectly. Problem is, I'll still need to rerun it periodically until the auto-assigning is fixed.

Jan 23, 2016 8:21 PM in response to cmichel42

So, I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned this. If you go to "album" view instead of the "song" list view (the drop-down menu is located on the right side below the search bar) you can click on the album you want to remove the soft (grey) album rating from. When the album comes up, there will be 5 stars and a heart to the left of the album artwork. You can click to the left of the 1st star and remove the soft ratings.

Jan 27, 2016 4:59 PM in response to cmichel42

The album ratings saga has been going on since at least 2007. Many people just want to get rid of the function where (song) Ratings affect Album Ratings and vice versa, and some have been able to use scripts to do so. I must say I don't think I would miss it if it were gone. Ratings and Album Ratings are two separate fields and having them automatically affect each other is just causing confusion. Grey stars begone!

I've come to the point where I understand how this system is intended to work. I've manually deleted al of *my* manual album ratings, so the only album ratings that are left are grey ones that have been automatically generated by iTunes because of the Ratings I've put on individual songs. There are no grey stars on any songs because I'm not rating any albums. This means that I can create a playlist of top rated songs, without any interference from automatic ratings.

I've just discovered that there are one or two black, i.e. manual, Album ratings that I must have missed, and I want to edit/delete them, but I now seem to have no way to edit an album rating at all.

I'm using Itunes 12.2.3 on a MacBook.

- In Albums view, what I see is album covers, and I can't change to a list view to see Album Ratings

- When I'm looking at an individual album with its list of songs, the dots or stars don't appear under the album cover as they used to

- If I right click on an album, the list of options that appears does not contain the ratings bar (stars/dots) as it used to

- I tried looking at Songs, which is in list view, and I can include a column for Album Rating. I can see iTunes grey stars there, and I can see some black stars, but I can't edit them. I can edit black stars in the Rating column, but not in the Album Rating column.

- Naturally, if I go into Get Info, even for multiple songs, only the song Rating is there, not the Album Rating.

Does anyone know how I can navigate to a single album rating to change it? If I can't even do this, this means that I couldn't rate an album even if I wanted to! This would mean either that the function has been abandoned and there's only old data there, or the 'feature' is not working and therefore this is a true bug.

turingtest2

Level 10

278,119 points

Jan 28, 2016 2:57 PM in response to bpalmerau

First use Edit > Preferences > General > Ratings > Starts & Loves to make sure star ratings are displayed.

In the Songs view with album art showing and in a wide enough column there will the artwork, stars and loves, and the star ratings can be changed.

tt2

Jan 28, 2016 6:13 PM in response to turingtest2

Thanks, the path iTunes > Preferences > General > Ratings > Starts & Loves worked. I can now edit album ratings. The interplay between Rating and Album Rating is still a little unpredictable for me (Tried to manually rate an album from under the artwork and the stars turned up grey in the column?!) but putting a single star on songs still seems to be the foolproof way to override computed Ratings for songs, so that the My Top Rated playlist works. And it's the one that can be done in bulk. Thanks again.

Melisa

Level 1

9 points

Mar 6, 2016 12:24 AM in response to drewBdoBdo

I've been looking for months for this! I had several entire albums keep cropping up into ratings-based playlists and it was just so frustrating because I couldn't get rid of them! It never occurred to me to check by album rating. Thanks again! 🙂

Jan 28, 2016 8:27 PM in response to bpalmerau

"It looks like you're trying to make a list of the songs you like most. Would you like an automatic algorithm to mysteriously interfere with that?"

turingtest2

Level 10

278,119 points

Aug 15, 2015 1:22 PM in response to cmichel42

There is a suggestion elsewhere that the mystery ratings (solid stars) happen when syncing. Have you upgraded to iTunes 12.2.2 yet? Can you tell if it is still an issue?

tt2

turingtest2

Level 10

278,119 points

Aug 23, 2015 11:38 PM in response to cmichel42

That sounds promising. 🙂

tt2

turingtest2

Level 10

278,119 points

Sep 6, 2015 3:08 PM in response to cmichel42

Yes, that seems to be what others are seeing, song ratings on the device become album ratings in iTunes. 😮😕

tt2

Sep 21, 2015 3:54 PM in response to cmichel42

yep 12.3 has broken album ratings. Can't figure out how to remove them.

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Is there a way to stop iTunes from automatically assigning album ratings?