I Love Stars
Potion Factory brainiac Andy Kim has just unleashed a new free app on the world - I Love Stars.This little app does two things very well. First, it displays your iTunes rating (from zero to five stars) in the menu bar for the song that is currently playing, and second, I Love Stars lets you change the rating. All this is done without having to flip between programs. Just glance at the menu bar to see the current rating, or drag across the stars to change your rating.
While Alton Brown may frown upon tools that don't perform a multitude of functions, this is one little app that any iTunes fan could love.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Gabriel Gomez-Iglesias said 8:16PM on 5-15-2008
A unitasker worth having.
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geekmorgan said 11:44AM on 5-16-2008
Go for M-Beat instead, its much more powerful and lets you rate songs from any application with hot keys. Its the best little app I've ever bought.
Ed said 8:36PM on 5-15-2008
Does what it's meant to; I like it.
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XianPalin said 8:49PM on 5-15-2008
I use You Control Tunes for this and it does the same thing and more.
http://www.yousoftware.com/tunes/
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Rhywun said 1:38PM on 5-16-2008
I've tried it; didn't care for it at all. The look 'n' feel of their products isn't very good. Plus, the constant upselling.
Rhywun said 8:59PM on 5-15-2008
Nice! I spend about half my time just surfing and reading - this is an easy way to rate tracks without the keyboard too.
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Mitch said 9:14PM on 5-15-2008
there used to be another tool called "iTunes rating" that did this but wasn't being updated and didn't work well with Leopard so i had to pitch it... nice to have a new tool for this function
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Matthew said 9:22PM on 5-15-2008
Great app!! look forward to finally organizing my iTunes library on the go... it used to be such a hastle.
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Luke James said 9:26PM on 5-15-2008
yes! i've been looking for exactly this since itunes first came out.
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jln said 9:52PM on 5-15-2008
Weird. Rating is the very feature I never used in iTunes. I thought no one used it... doh.
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h8rain said 9:43AM on 5-16-2008
I use ratings all the time. I only have a 4gb iPhone, so I have a Smart playlist that grabs only songs with a rating of 4 or 5. That playlist is the only one that is synced with the iPhone. That way I can (easily) control what goes on my iPhone, so I only have music I really like due ot the limited space.
名古屋 風俗 said 10:30PM on 5-15-2008
頑張って下さい。
名古屋 風俗
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GDC said 11:51PM on 5-15-2008
Great Alton brown reference - but even he allows a unitasker: the fire hydrant.
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Barry Ward said 4:15AM on 5-16-2008
Nice. I like all of my tracks to have a rating, and sometimes alter them while listening. To jln who posted earlier, I use ratings for use with my Smart Playlists in iTunes, where it will automatically put any track with 5 stars into my Top Tunes playlist for example.
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jln said 8:32AM on 5-16-2008
Yes? Actually, i realized I use my digital music library just like I use my CD collection. That is, I usually rarely use playlists but rather play a whole album. I feel so old fashioned, now ! :-)
Mitch said 5:20AM on 5-16-2008
oh - and there's nothing like xGestures to move to the next song etc... simple mouse movements control iTunes...
http://alum.hampshire.edu/~bjk02/xGestures/purchase.htm
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kurt.tappe said 10:40AM on 5-16-2008
I've never understood the iTunes rating system. I mean, you can rate items from 1 to 5 stars....but why would you have something on your iPod/iTunes that you rate 1 star? I tend to throw away anything I don't like, and thus the rating system is unneeded--I like everything I have.
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glebec said 2:57PM on 5-16-2008
Hi,
It's precisely because I don't need songs I don't like on my iPod that I rate songs. Actually, that's just one reason. But if I rate all my songs - which I have for over 93% of my 4400+ library - I can create dynamic "smart" playlists that take ratings into account, among other information. Similarly I can tell my iPod (which doesn't have nearly enough space to fit my entire library - I rip to lossless) to only take songs over a certain rating.
I keep songs I don't like on my computer because I own them! I bought the CD, but I run all my music off of hard drives streaming digitally to external D/A convertors, and sometimes I do in fact wish to hear an entire album as the artist intended. Other stuff I keep around because even though it's not my favorite, it's got some funny or cool specific section I want on file, or it's a track by a friend or group I have some personal connection to, or any number of other reasons. I uncheck stuff I don't want to listen to randomly, but I still want to know roughly how much I do or do not like it.
It's a matter of philosophy regarding a music collection - more information is inherently better, as it enables greater flexibility and control down the road.
This app is great IMHO. I wish CoverSutra would offer more display options - if it just included stars somewhere around the desktop album display, I wouldn't need this app. But as a small free fix to that lamentably absent feature, it's working great for me.
glebec said 3:05PM on 5-16-2008
Oh, and one other reason - as much as I *think* I know my music collection, and what I do and do not like, I am often amazed by the results of the following: I'll skip to the next track, it will sound like something I am not interested in yet I rated it 4 stars. So I deliberately exercise patience, and lo and behold 2 minutes in the song changes drastically to another section or movement and suddenly I recognize it and remember why I rated it so highly.
This actually does happen with surprising frequency and is just one more reason why ratings help organize my music.
consumer_q said 12:52PM on 5-16-2008
@Kurttappe
Most of my song rating is done on my ipod itself, during my commute, so in my case, there will be many single star songs. ;)
Additionally, sometimes I want to hear an album through-in-through, even if it may contain songs I do not especially like. My tastes have also changed over the years, I may 'rediscover' a song, or a song that once meant nothing to me becomes emotionally linked to an experience, so it increases in value.
I stayed away from the whole rating thing for years, but then I began to apply ratings in a very similar way that I do for my photos (DAM-style: http://www.thedambook.com/ ). The rating and genre options have really increased my enjoyment of my huge music collection by offering many ways for me to find the general group of songs that I want to listen to.
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