What does the star mean in Apple Music?

That is false. In iOS 9 and prior your music yyou could rate your own music and it would find in ratings from your iTunes on desktop. i know that iTunes 9 on desktop was hated bu music lovers, iTunes 10, 11... all designed to enrage music fans. OSX lion and all versions after make creative professionals want to jump off a cliff and UX designers like myself want to reanimate Steve Jobs' body in hope he csn see how basterdized his work has become. It does not surprise me if iOS 10 is a sad attempt to shed more Apple fans.

According to the user guide, stars appear next to the most popular tracks played by all Apple Music members.

Apple doesn't let anyone rate your songs. It just shows you the most popular ones.

You can still love or dislike songs and that will affect suggested radio stations, smart playlistd, genius and shuffling.

The stars appear to be tied to popularity on Apple Music, as several others have remarked. I've a also noticed that they only appear on songs purchased from the iTunes Store. Music ripped from CDs or downloaded from third party websites do not have any such star delineation.

I'm pretty sure they are the songs designated by the artist/label as the 'singles', so they typically are the most popular songs. With quite a few of my albums, some have no stars, some have all the tracks starred. Which would leave me to believe that it is decided by the posting artist and/or record label.

I don't think stars beside singles is correct because in specific reference to Melanie Martinez's album Crybaby- 3 songs on the album are singles- yet out of those 3 songs only two are starred- and out of the entire album there are 5 songs starred total so far that is.

Apple seems to think the collective mindset ought to affect my mindset. 1984 slowly begins- that is if we can say it hasn't begun already.

I see the replies that suggest they are "popular" tracks from other users, but I'm not sure that's true. I've opened albums from U2 and Pink Floyd and didn't see any stars listed in these very popular albums. I did notice that in the albums that I do see them, they happen to be tracks that I previewed prior to purchasing the album.

It’s justt a suggestion, nowhere does it say you have to or even should like it. It’s simply based on statstistically whether other people have liked it. It’s not so bad when you see it for what it’s meant to be and not some terrible fantasy.

have you rated the song?

That's just the mark of most popular songs. Open couple of albums of the bands you know well and you will see for yourself.

Where do I find this user guide?

Apple thinks you should like that song. They don't understand we can make our own decisions and that it is actually annoying.

So Apple no longer lets us rate our own songs, but they let other people tell us. So much for freedom of choice. I'm going back to iOS9

Thanks for your helpful answer. Where can I find the user guide for Apple Music? Pam