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.













Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
5-15-2008 @ 8:16PM
Gabriel Gomez-Iglesias said...
A unitasker worth having.
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5-16-2008 @ 11:44AM
geekmorgan said...
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.
5-15-2008 @ 8:36PM
Ed said...
Does what it's meant to; I like it.
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5-15-2008 @ 8:49PM
XianPalin said...
I use You Control Tunes for this and it does the same thing and more.
http://www.yousoftware.com/tunes/
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5-16-2008 @ 1:38PM
Rhywun said...
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.
5-15-2008 @ 8:59PM
Rhywun said...
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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5-15-2008 @ 9:14PM
Mitch said...
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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5-15-2008 @ 9:22PM
Matthew said...
Great app!! look forward to finally organizing my iTunes library on the go... it used to be such a hastle.
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5-15-2008 @ 9:26PM
Luke James said...
yes! i've been looking for exactly this since itunes first came out.
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5-15-2008 @ 9:52PM
jln said...
Weird. Rating is the very feature I never used in iTunes. I thought no one used it... doh.
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5-16-2008 @ 9:43AM
h8rain said...
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.
5-15-2008 @ 10:30PM
名古屋 風俗 said...
頑張って下さい。
名古屋 風俗
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5-15-2008 @ 11:51PM
GDC said...
Great Alton brown reference - but even he allows a unitasker: the fire hydrant.
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5-16-2008 @ 4:15AM
Barry Ward said...
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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5-16-2008 @ 8:32AM
jln said...
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 ! :-)
5-16-2008 @ 5:20AM
Mitch said...
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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5-16-2008 @ 10:40AM
kurt.tappe said...
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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5-16-2008 @ 2:57PM
glebec said...
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.
5-16-2008 @ 3:05PM
glebec said...
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.
5-16-2008 @ 12:52PM
consumer_q said...
@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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