How do I stop automatic album ratings?

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.

Hmmm I tried what you said, but it doesn't seem work. The greyed out five stars come back every time, and keep adding the whole album to my "smart" playlist. Have I missed something?

And this is what happened when I tried to leave stars for the new heart likes: iTunes 12 bug empties smart playlist

Someone suggested using "grouping" as a sort of rating instead, to set up a smart playlist. Maybe that will help until they fix this.

Yep, I dropped that suggestion in your thread. I seriously doubt the iPod classic is going to get a patch, so unless iTunes is able to massage the data that is synced to the device in some way to yield the correct results you're going to have to find your own workaround. In the 9 odd years since iTunes has been able to make use of the Album Artist field to link things together nothing has been done to correct the way guest or featured artists will often break up an album on a classic.

tt2

Same problem for me, and I have the Iphone 6S Plus with updated software. The greyed-out stars seem to occur after I rate a new song - it then affects the album rating, which transfers greyed-out starts to unrated songs.

Any updates or fixes?

I've been thinking about this issue (erroneous "greyed" star ratings) for a while.

Although it appears to only affect the iPod Classic (unless anyone can confirm otherwise), it's only recent, during which time there has been no update to the Classic's software, so it must be iTunes that's causing it to happen. Let's hope that an iTunes update will fix this because it really is a pain.

It's not just you. But trying to read everything I can find on the subject, it seems my situation is even more esoteric...

I subscribe to iTunes Match and I listen to music on 3 main "systems":

- Main iTunes library on iMac (ALL files are local)

- MacBook Pro (some files local)

- iPhone 6s Plus (some files local)

The very weird thing is that only the MacBook Pro library is affected by this. I have many "Best of <artist>" playlists. On iMac and iPhone, they are fine, showing only the rated songs. But on the MacBook Pro, they include all songs from an album that contains a rated song. Even if I never added a rating to that song. I understand now this is due to that weird issue where album ratings are sort of reflected in individual songs.

But I find it really weird that this would only affect one of the two "online" libraries. And yes, I am quite glad this hasn't affected (yet!) my main source one. I am thinking of resetting the MacBook Pro library and reconnecting to iTunes match... If I do, I'll report back.

I too have this on windows and no possibility to remove the album rating. Did not check on my Mac yet. But I've noticed the album rating stars next to the cover are gone in Windows 😮. That's where I did clear the rating prior to 12.4.

What does everybody mean by clicking left to the stars ? Album rating in title view if you display the column?

tt2

I know that this is there on my Mac but on Windows 10, iTunes v12.4.1.6 32bit this looks like this:

Edit > Preferences > General > Ratings > Stars & Loves.

tt2

Thanks, that's what I was searching for. Now removing the rating is not a problem. They must have changed the default setting and now I can also remove the stupid favorit heart.

Big thanks again!

You're welcome. 🙂

tt2

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