How do I stop automatic album ratings?

Is there any way of solving this problem on OSX? Looks like your scripts are only for Windows. I'm assuming the "uncheck Stars & Loves" solution is as well, because it doesn't show for me in iTunes 12.7.2.58 for OS High Sierra.

No, it is just about as simple as using terminal. Open the Script Editor, copy the text of one of the scripts from Re: Handling grey stars which are each just a few lines long. paste into a new document in the editor, then save with the script's title as a filename. Menus should be the same as any other app that manages documents. After pasting in the script there is a little hammer/pick icon that compiles the script and restores the colour coding and highlighting I've shown in the listings. A play button runs the script. It only works on selected tracks, but once you tested that it works as you want you can use CMD+A to select everything before running again. You will need to use the script again on new content after adding it to your library, although only if you are rating those tracks and are bothered by the new auto-ratings that arise.

tt2

Hi Turingtest2,

Do you know if there has been a patch on this? You admirably condensed the problem above, and I am still looking for a solution, more than a year and a half after! Stars are BLUE and GREY now, but my ipod classic (120G so no way I'll swap this one yet) is still is still applying BLUE stars on Albums instead of Tracks.

I would really love a patch or upgrade or solution link somewhere!!!

Thank you,

Berto

Berto_V wrote:

your answer Edit > Preferences > General > Ratings > Stars & Loves, is this in iTunes or ...? I could not find this in preference > General in iTunes..

This was in iTunes 12.4. You (likely) have 12.5.

There is iTunes prefs > General - Star ratings

Hi Chris.

Yes Ratings are clicked.

Is there a solution in the end for the hard rating of albums by devices instead of tracks?

I have run tt2 scripts, it does indeed put the 1% rating on albums, so grey stars disappear, but the blue ones I never wanted (starred by my ipod classic instead of actual tracks), are still there..

As written the ClearAlbumAutoRating script is designed to preserve existing manual ratings on the basis that these might be intentional. If you want to overwrite those as well you can edit what is currently line 165 from:

Updateable=(.AlbumRatingKind=1) ' Only process AutoRated tracks

to:

Updateable=True ' Process all tracks

And it will update the manual ratings too.

tt2

They need to be copied into the Script Editor which you will find in Applications > Utilities. Saving in <User>/Library/iTunes/Scripts lets you run them from the iTunes menu bar, otherwise run them inside the Script Editor.

tt2

Thank you. I've never used Script Editor, and I'm going to go hunt down some instructions on using it - it looks like it's not as straightforward as "paste in the text of the script and hit enter" as one does in Terminal. If you have a link you like to a SE walkthrough, would you mind sharing it? I'm trying to parse out the idea of recording and running scripts, and what that means (do I have to run them every time I use iTunes? etc.) but I can self-educate as needed with good links.

Thank you. I was feeling my way through and had the idea, but I wasn't clear that it would need to be re-run on new content as I add it. Pity there isn't a way to "set it and forget it." [sigh] Oh, Apple.

See Re: Handling grey stars for Mac versions of the scripts.

tt2

The hollow stars are autoratings generated because some of the tracks on the album have been rated. If you rate an album as 3 stars all unrated tracks get a 3 star autorated track rating. If you rate one track from an album as 2 stars, and another as 4, leave the rest undated, the album gets autorated to 3 stars (the average of all manually rated tracks).

iTunes generates these autoratings on the fly. To clear them use my scripts ClearAlbumAutoRating and/or ClearTrackAutoRating which sets manual values of 1%. There are corresponding scripts to reset things if you want.

There currently seems to be another issue where syncing after tracks have been rated on a device may cause an album to gain a full rating. Hopefully Apple are aware of this issue and will resolve in a later build, but keep an eye out for unwanted changes.

tt2

Hi Steve,

(apologies to you Skylar, for crashing in on your post)

Steve, you've posted several times about Album Ratings, Track Ratings and how the ratings are influenced. But as usual, my aged brain is having trouble following all the various discussions, so you may have addressed this particular scenario already - I just can't find it. I've looked at your scripts.

I understand that giving a song a rating will influence the Album Rating - that makes sense, even though I don't always agree that two good songs means that the whole album is good! However, the issue is when that average album rating gets posted back to individual tracks as greyed out stars, which then influences Smart Playlist content. In my Library, I do not assign Album Ratings, so all Album Ratings have been assigned automatically. My issue is that those Album Ratings are sometimes - but not always - assigned back to the individual songs and that causes songs to be added to Smart Playlists when they should not be.

In the following screenshots, I've assigned a 4-star rating to one song and a 2-star rating to a second one. This causes the Album Rating to be given a 3-star rating, which in turn has then caused all the remaining individual tracks to be be assigned greyed-out 3 stars as Song Ratings. The problem is that this causes those other tracks to be erroneously added to my Smart Playlist of 3-star songs.

Here's the album itself, as (in a songs view) with the erroneously marked songs:

Consequently, the greyed out 3-star-rated songs appear in my Smart Playlist (notice the album "In Sides" listed between "In Flight" and "In Space Outta Sound":

As a result, my 3-Star rated Smart Playlist has 729 albums and 1068 songs.

It took several attempts to remove the greyed out rating from the songs - and I do mean several attempts. Attempting to clear the Album Rating by clicking just to the left of the one star, or highlighting the tracks and using the right-click menu/album rating/none fails to do what is required. Eventually though, the greyed out rating did clear.

Once they were cleared, the Smart Playlist is right (in regard to this one album!)

Here's the album now:

Notice though, that the greyed out Album Rating is no longer 3-star, but mysteriously 4-star!

But at least, now...

...the album is no longer in the Smart Playlist. The number of songs in the Smart Playlist has reduced by four (to 1064) and the number of albums is now just 728.

...and now, onto the next album...

So the symptoms are:

• Average Album Ratings are sometimes - but not always - assigned back to individual song ratings. (I regard this as incorrect behaviour)
• Once set, the Album Rating itself can be changed, but whether or not that is reflected in the track ratings appears random and simply changes the tracks to that same new rating.
• Persistent attempts to change the album rating so that the song ratings are not influenced by it appears impossible - or very, very difficult.

My questions are:

1. Can this behaviour be correct?
2. How can I control whether the average Album Rating is transferred back to the individual songs? (I don't want it to do this.)

Just to prove my point, here's another album where I have assigned star ratings to some tracks, which has caused the Album Rating to be assigned an average rating, but that has not then added that average rating to the other songs.

Is it just me?

Regards,

Phil

Update:

It appears that if I double-click to the left of the stars of Album Rating (at the correct speed), that will clear the erroneous track ratings without affecting anything else.

Hi Phil,

Do you update ratings on your iPod? I haven't had time to investigate myself, but a few other threads are suggesting that recent versions of iTunes are translating updated song ratings on a device into manual album ratings back in iTunes, which then auto track rates the other tracks from the same album, confusing any smart playlists based solely on song ratings.

tt2

turingtest2 wrote:

Do you update ratings on your iPod?

Yes, I do, and I was afraid you might ask that.

It's an iPod Classic and I did wonder if that might be the issue. I have tested this, but so far I haven't had any ratings problems. I tried changing (on the iPod) a star rating on a song in an album that already had some rated songs and then tried rating a song on an album with no other rated songs. But in neither case did I have any issues.

I don't suppose this will be fixed any time soon, especially if the issue is related to the iPod Classic, but at least I know how to get round the problem it causes.