Filed under: iPod Family, iTunes, Mac 101
Mac 101: Stars and Smart Playlists
If you're anything like me -- and I sincerely hope you're not, for your sake -- you have a large iTunes music library, but the music that you like right now is only a small fraction of that total. (Yeah, that embarrassing '96 Dave Matthews Band album is getting pretty dusty.)
Since my musical tastes vary from day to day, and songs quickly fall in and out of my fickle favor, I love assigning ratings to the music I like this minute. I have a five-star rating for la crème de la crème, and a four-star rating for stuff that's pretty good. Three-star items are sadly relegated to history.
Next, I combine ratings with smart playlists: Now I can add and remove songs from my current rotation just by changing their star rating. I can do this on-the-go, too: Change a rating on my iPod, and the playlists are updated immediately, and eventually synced back to the computer.
Follow me across the jump to see how you can dynamically and efficiently manage your music as quickly as your tastes change.
The first part is the easiest: Assign star ratings to the songs you like most. You can do this any number of ways: by clicking the appropriate number of stars next to a song in iTunes, or clicking and holding the iTunes icon in the dock while the song is playing (and then choosing Rating). You can also select a rating on your iPod, and then sync your iPod to see the ratings show up in iTunes.
Next, assuming you've chosen a rating scheme like mine, we'll set up a smart playlist to include just five-star songs. (We'll do four-star songs next.)
-
In iTunes, hold down the option key, and you'll see the
button turn into a gear: 
. Click the gear. -
In the window that appears, select Rating from the first drop-down menu, choose is for the second drop-down menu, and click all five stars.
-
Make sure the Live updating box is checked.
-
Click OK.
You can name the playlist anything you want: "Five-star," for example. Personally, I like seeing five actual stars as the name of the list, so I've named the list ★★★★★, which works great on iPods, too.
When you click on the list, you'll see that all your five-star songs are in there. Perfect. Let's move on to the four-star list.
-
Hold down option and click the gear icon again.
-
In the window that appears, select Rating from the first drop-down menu, choose is greater than for the second drop-down menu, and click only three stars. (This will make sure that both four- and five-star songs appear in this smart playlist.)
-
Make sure the Live updating box is checked.
-
Click OK.
Now your four-star list will include a broader range of your all-time favorites, and the better songs from your music library. A playlist like this is great for longer drives, work sessions, or any time you need more diverse music to fill the void.
All you have to do now is sync these playlists with your iPod, and you're all set. You can change the star rating right on your iPod, and the playlist will be updated immediately with your new choice. (You may have to back out of the playlist and select it again to see your new lineup. Some commenters are reporting that this doesn't work on iPods of iPod Photo vintage and older. I can personally attest to it working on my 5G iPod and my iPod touch.)
Enjoy the freedom of not being locked in to what your playlists were this morning, or even 10 minutes ago!
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Nixta said 9:25AM on 7-28-2008
This is a huge problem though. There *is* no efficient way to set the rating on your iPod. I have an iPod Touch. I have to take it out, unlock it, switch to the music if it isn't there, flip the album cover around, and rate it, by which point I'm so bored and pissed off I can't stand the song any more.
iPod Touch? Forget it. I never really listen to music on my Mac, and if I do it's while I'm doing other things.
Apple: Make it a one button thing to rate the current song on an iPod and you'll make this truly powerful.
Someone write an app that does this for iPhone/iPod Touch, and someone write one for the Mac: Fn-Opt-1 for 1 star on the current playing song!
As usual with the iPod music interface, so near and yet so utterly far from anything truly useful (FYI, I have only ever owned iPods and love them, but this aspect of them drives me nuts).
Reply
Nixta said 9:29AM on 7-28-2008
I meant "iPod Shuffle - forget it" ;) Seriously, I could just click 5 times for a song I wanted to rate 5 stars or something, 5 confirmation beeps follow, I press twice to confirm, once to cancel. iPod stays in pocket. Song gets rated. 7 clicks max. Playlists get updated.
James said 10:22AM on 7-28-2008
"and someone write one for the Mac: Fn-Opt-1 for 1 star on the current playing song!"
There are countless apps which do this
d said 9:46AM on 7-28-2008
I have an iPod touch and agree with you on that point. I also have a shuffle and should point out that because the shuffle does not have a screen, it can't have ratings or playlists. The shuffle is meant to stay in your pocket and play, nothing more.
And SizzlingKeys (http://www.yellowmug.com/sk4it/) is a great free customizable iTunes controller for mac that includes ratings.
Le Big Mac said 9:48AM on 7-28-2008
You need old school. No problem with my iPod 3G to change the rating. Middle click twice, scroll wheel to adjust. Click to set. Done.
Nixta said 10:14AM on 7-28-2008
@d: Thanks - I'll check that out. But I still think the Shuffle could allow ratings. It'd be helpful. I mean, you don't enjoy or dislike your music any more or less just because you're playing it without a screen.
@Le Big Mac: Absolutely. I can't believe how much useful stuff they dropped with these newer devices. On-the-go playlist? How? What? Oh, I can't just create one on the fly? But holding down the middle-button to add the selection used to work nicely (even then though, you couldn't just have it play next unless you were already in the on-the-go playlist...)
Mike McCarron said 9:28AM on 7-28-2008
I agree this is very useful. I create smart playlists that display all my 5 star songs a specific year or span of years. This way i don't have to rerate songs after they have grown out of favor. In fact I can archive all the songs i loved back in 1996 to a single playlist if i felt like it.
Reply
Rogério Rocha said 9:40AM on 7-28-2008
Hey, "Crash" is one o the best DMB albums. The band is on a downhill trod from "Everyday". But they still kick ass as a live act. :-)
Reply
d said 9:50AM on 7-28-2008
tru dat
Aelver said 9:40AM on 7-28-2008
I would love some sort of auto-rating system. Start at 3 stars, skip the song immediately, decrease by 1/2 star. Play till end, increase by 1/2. Play half way, keep the same.
I know MediaMonkey has these plugin's, but would love something on the Apple/iTunes side.
Combine this with skip count, play count, last played, maybe even Moody ... and you could have something truely powerful.
Reply
d said 9:48AM on 7-28-2008
I found a script that does this somewhere on the Apple downloads site. I forget what it was called, but it used primarily the skip rate and the play count.
David said 10:05AM on 7-28-2008
There is an application for auto rating. I use it to rate the songs then use smart playlists to organize it. I find it rates new songs too high so end up having to adjust the ratings a bit sometimes but overall it works well. Here is the site- http://tzisoftware.com/products/autorate
joel.zimmer said 10:05AM on 7-28-2008
I have this running every night at 3am: http://tzisoftware.com/products/autorate
god.DLL said 10:08PM on 7-28-2008
I tried to use these. They don't work for me.
My rating system is peculiar, you see. Four for a song I'd listen to anytime, three for that "sometimes" thing and two for something that is not good enough to get into the Party Mix. Five's a masterpiece.
Smart playlists then help me out with all of my iPod syncing, and shuffling; with all my genre/mood playlists.
I found that to be working best for now. "I Love Stars" with it's half-star ratings on my Mac, and some on-the-go with my 2G Nano take care of my collection management. I don't usually need to rate songs on the go though, because they get onto the iPod only if they meet certain criteria, as I sync to smart playlists to begin with.
Aelver said 11:09PM on 7-28-2008
Thanks for all the replies/info :)
I think my system is similar to god.DLL's. I start everything on one star. I move to zero if it's crap (and un-check once back at home). Two stars I may want to listen to it. Three stars is above average, four stars awesome, five stars ... awesome^10.
Starting on one star, I can easily see what I haven't rated. If I started everything on zero, I wouldn't know what was crap and which I hadn't rated yet.
Andre said 9:44AM on 7-28-2008
I use the above, and what gets synced to my iPod Touch is only the 5 star songs. If I want to remove a song from the iPod, I change its rating on the iPod, and at next sync it gets removed.
I also have a 4 & 5 star playlist that decides what gets synched to the Apple TV.
Since I don't use 1 and 2 stars, I may use that to mark "special" songs in another playlist that I can easily add or remove from synching with a checkbox.
Reply
pureadrenalin2005 said 9:49AM on 7-28-2008
Thanks for this great tip. I have been using itunes for years now but never bothered using the ratings. However, now that I have several iPods, connect them to my Alpine car stereo and home receiver, this is going to make it easier to listen to music rather than constantly flipping though a few hundred songs until I find one I feel like listening to.
Reply
Le Big Mac said 9:49AM on 7-28-2008
BTW, combine the stars with a "last played" "at least x days ago" to get a playlist that has your least listened to favorites.
Reply
Tony said 10:14AM on 7-28-2008
The problem is this hasn't worked in itunes for ages - smart playlists don't update on sync.
http://forums.ilounge.com/showthread.php?t=209822 for details (although I can't read this - ilounge banned me for some reason that I've never been able to work out.. maybe it's because I'm from the UK or something..).
Le Big Mac said 10:23AM on 7-28-2008
Tony -- I've had no problems with the list updating each time I sync. iTunes downloads the data that is was played on my iPod and then determines those songs are off "the list" since they were played recently and puts on new ones that are in the specified time limit. I have the most recent iTunes, although my iPod is a bit old . . .