AutoRate: iTunes rating done right

@Bibulb - #17: Backups are about the only way I know of to save your play-count. Ratings are saved: http://hackd.net/2007/04/17/case-of-the-missing-files/
but the only way I can think of getting back your play-count is by way of another apple script that will read the XML you have and assign ratings one by one.

I wasn't going to open my mouth until I tried Autorate myself. It was EXACTLY the program I was looking for. That is until I finally let it run through my 8,000+ unrated songs. The algorithm I believe would work great for someone with a new library who was listening to each album a few times as they get imported. My unrated tracks (like others here) are generally songs that have 0 or 1 play through, and not a single skip anywhere in sight.

I think this application has potential but I feel it needs to truly analyze your library. It should take into account how you rate songs based on how you've rated music by similar artists, music in the same genre, etc. Then it should take the algorithm it already has and maybe the combo would produce fair results for everybody. I'm not even sure it's possible, but one can dream.

Will AutoRate, auto listen for you too? It seems that web users are getting more comfortable with automation & so where is the fun there days? Any way, go to hear if you are interested in selecting your own music and listening to it.

http://Savenetradio.org
http://ThunkDifferent.com

For #16, the best thing I could recommend is simply to duplicate the library file in the Finder beforehand. (I've taken to doing this every day or so anyway just because any time iTunes has crashed lately, it's killed my library file.)

On that note, anyone know of a way to resurrect the binary library file? (And/or to put stuff like ratings, play count et al into each file as ID3 tags rather than in the monolithic library file?)

This tip should be accompanied by another tip that shows you how to backup the library file (not all the songs, just the library) so that if you don't like the way this worked out, you could swap out the new library with the saved one.

Yeah, I agree with everyone that agrees with #10.... Something like the way Last.fm Counts plays would be much better (i think its half the track or 2min40sec, whichever comes first, right?)

I found the ratings i got from this thing were REALLY weird.

Oh, and I REALLY agree with #10, it is one of my biggest pet peeves, since I rarely listen to the whole track, I'm a fidgety listener.

This program sucks, It rated about 1/5 of my library at 5 stars, gave another 1/5 of my library half stars and left the rest blank. Something is fundamentally wrong with the formula it uses.

I agree with #1

#10 has the same complaint that I do. that's mainly why I haven't downloaded this app. (even though I came across it a while ago while browsing macupdate)