How can I change the album rating in 12.6?

For manual ratings switch to the songs view, enable album artwork for all albums and make the artwork column wide enough to show album rating. You can only edit the rating from this artwork column, not the Album Rating column where it is read only.

These four scripts can override or reset the auto-rating behaviour:

• ClearAlbumAutoRating
• ClearTrackAutoRating
• ResetAlbumAutoRating
• ResetTrackAutoRating

Select some tracks and run the selected Clear... script. If you change the album rating of one track all the others from the same album get automatically updated so if you process 30 tracks from 3 albums you may only see 3 updates in the results, but the script will have done the work. Use the Reset... scripts to restore the original AutoRating function. The Clear... scripts set a manual rating of 1% if the track is currently AutoRated and the Reset... scripts only restore AutoRating when the rating is 1%. You can change the criteria so that all tracks are processed if you wish. Annoyingly there doesn't seem to be a way to bulk change album ratings in the current version of Get Info.

tt2

Undoing the album rating is a bit of an issue. User tt2 does have a script for removing album ratings, but try as I might this evening, I can't find it. Luckily - while I have been editing this post, he has posted the information that I was looking for. (Thanks tt2.)

But let's see if we can get some sense into this though. If I explain how iTunes appears to work, perhaps you can find a way to manage your ratings that is to your liking.

My advice (if this suits you of course) is to read through these steps and if you think this may help you, choose an album or two in your Library (without any ratings at all) and experiment with the ratings as I've shown. Once you master what happens, and how you would like to control it, you can then take off all the ratings for the test albums.

1. If you assign a rating to a song (it'll be in blue), iTunes will assign an average (greyed out) "average" rating to the album (and it seems that you cannot avoid this)
2. If you assign a rating to an album (it'll be blue), iTunes will assign greyed out ratings to any song on the album that you have not rated, based on the album rating. See note A. below.
3. See the note B. below for what happens if you try to completely remove an album rating.

See if these pictures make sense.

Here's an album where I have previously rated some, but not all songs. The ringed "rating" in the shot (3.) is the album rating, not the songs.

So - in the shot above, in the list of songs on the album, you can see the songs I rated, a mixture of two, three and four stars and some songs which have not been not rated at all. As a result of this, the album rating has been automatically assigned by iTunes as three stars (which is actually incorrect - but that's a separate story). Check the same album out in the Songs view after I turned on the columns for both the song and the album rating:

In this shot, you can see the songs I rated, the stars are in blue. Because iTunes has assigned the album rating, it's in grey.

Now let's look at an album where I rate the album first. You cannot rate an album in the Songs view, so switch back to the Albums view.

My next step (in the shot above) is to select that three stars line in order to assign an album rating of three stars to this album.

Still in the Albums view, notice that the Album Rating is in blue (compare it with the other album...) but the song ratings are in grey (because iTunes assigned these):

.. note the album rating (as assigned by iTunes) is grey.

Back to the album Acapulco Now. If I subsequently assign a rating to one song on this album, that song rating turns blue, while the others stay in grey:

If we look at this album in the Songs view and compare it with the Absolute Soul album in Songs view...

.. you will notice that for the album Acapulco Now the song I rated is in blue (because I set it), while the others are in grey (because iTunes set those). But the album rating is now in blue (because I set that).

Far too complex.

Note about point 3. above:

But here's a little issue:

If I now try to make the Album Rating None, it will simply assign a grey three star rating based on just one song being rated, and I end up with this:

You cannot stop this.

A couple of extra points:

Note A - Smart Playlists;

A common reason why users don't like the automatic ratings is that it causes songs to be put into the Favourite Songs Smart Playlist . If I leave those greyed out three-star ratings on the album Acapulco Now, they will be in my three-star-rated-songs Playlist, even though I don't like them.

Note B.

I wouldn't mind about iTunes assigning automatic album ratings, except that the correct rating for this eight-track album, with just one track rated as three stars, is zero, not 3. Unfortunately, Apple regard songs that I have not rated as non-rated, whereas many users (including me) regard an unrated song as zero stars (you only have to look at any user review to find people who say a product is so bad I wanted to give it zero stars, but the system will not let me). As a consequence, this album ends up with a three-star rating for just one song!

Yes it does, it's just not very intuitive. (Actually, it's quite odd!)

If you right-click the album you will see Rating on the context menu that pops up. Use this to assign an album rating. However, what you will see in the Album view (with that album expanded to display the tracks) is the tracks being given a greyed-out rating. That's the song rating.

If you switch to the Songs view and display the columns for both song rating and album rating, you will see that the album rating is in blue stars (because that what you assigned to it) while the songs are in greyed-out stars because iTunes has assigned that rating to any song not already rated.

So, for example, if you have a song or two on an album that you have rated as 2 stars and you then rate the album as three stars, what you will see is that each song is now rated, but the two star ratings (which you assigned) are in blue while the three star ratings are in grey.

Hmm, were you running the script against a smart playlist? That error would suggest that the number of objects in the playlist changed while the script was running. It would be OK if the most recent item fell out of the list, but not if a whole album did. I can probably work up a fix but it would be good to know that I'm on the right lines first.

tt2

I believe we’ve been thinking about this situation all wrong. Yes, the introduction of automated album ratings has messed up many of our beloved smart playlists. But the problem lies not with the added ratings but with the “smart” playlist rules.

There are presently two choices for filtering by star ratings. One is “Album Ratings,” which selects tracks with album ratings, and “Ratings,” which selects tracks with any rating, either for the track or the album.

The solution is for Apple to redefine “Ratings” to mean “Track Ratings.” Then one could construct a rule to show only album ratings (often auto), track ratings (always manual), or both.

I’ve submitted this idea to Apple through the proper channels.

In the meantime, here’s one work-around. Whenever you rate a track with stars, also rate it as “loved” (the red heart symbol). This way, tracks with stars automatically assigned are not loved, while those assigned manually are. Then set the rules of your smart playlist to require BOTH stars and loved.