rate all my songs on iTunes

I’ve completed this goal, but now I need to go through my iPod and delete duplicate songs so that I have each song rated only once. There aren’t a lot of duplicates, but the do pile up when putting in a mix of standard albums, greatest hits albums and compilations. Then I really want to see which artists I statistically like most based on overall ratings, etc…

I’ve moved from my main CD library to the compliation CDs. I have about 20 more to rip and rate and then I’ll be done. I won’t be ripping my classical CDs (I only have about 10 classical CDs) but I don’t really feel that’s any loss. I don’t think rating classical is important. I generally like to listen to them from start to finish.

I’ve currently got 4900+ songs in my iTunes and about 4750 are rated.

I’ve been hearing a lot of songs that I haven’t heard in a while doing this. Although I’ve learned that I like some older songs more than I thought I did I’ve found more that I thought I liked more than I do.

What’s been really interesting for me has been to move my ratings to a spreadsheet to find out which albums are my favorites based on my ratings. There were some albums that I liked more than I thought I did. I made several different lists. I’ve the the list of albums by overall average rating, albums by the number of songs I’ve given 4 or 5 stars and percent of 4 or 5 star songs on the album. (As you can tell I’m a analysis geek.)

My top 10 list by averages is:

Cocteau Twins – Heaven Or Las Vegas
100 Watt Smile – 100 Watt Smile
k.d. lang – Ingenue
Liz Phair – Exile in Guyville
The Beatles – Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
Liz Phair – Whip-Smart
Elastica – Elastica
Oranger – Doorway To Norway
Devo – Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!
Yellow Second – Still Small

My top ten by percentage of 4 and 5 star songs is:

The Beatles – Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
Liz Phair – Whip-Smart
Oranger – Doorway To Norway
Elastica – Elastica
Devo – Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!
The Beatles – Rubber Soul
Vomit Launch – Dogeared
The Breeders – Pod
The Amps – Pacer
Pixies – Death To The Pixies

I’ll have to rip some more CDs into my iPod and rate those CDs as well. I think I’ll also count the number of CDs I have left to rip and then rate the songs on.

I have over 3,000 songs rated now. It’s been an interesting experience. I’ve found out that I like some music that I stopped listening to more than I thought I did and some of the stuff I listen to from time to time is less interesting to me than it was before.

I think the most unusual thing about rating the songs on the iPod is that I played them in song shuffle mode so they were not in the context of their albums. Some songs really shined when played by themselves, but others needed the context of their place on the album to really work well. All in all it was a lot of fun and I’ll be doing more of it as I load more CDs onto my iPod.

I’m listening to things I forgot I had and I’m rediscovering music I used to listen to more often. I’ve got over 3000 songs on my iPod and have about 1300 of them rated. I’ll be adding more songs to get all of my CDs on the iPod, but I’m glad I’m almost to the half way point.

The biggest trouble I’m having with this goal is balancing it with discovering new music. I want to do both, but I have to choose between the two. New music has been winning out, but I’m rating now, so we’ll see how it goes.

I rated all of the mp3 files I’ve downloaded over the years along with a handful of CDs that I wanted on my iPod when I got it. I’m now adding more CDs to my iPod, so it’s time to rate all of them now.

I’ve already rated many of the songs I’ve been hearing on Pandora.com, so I can simply map my method for rating songs on Pandora to iTunes. I’m also only rating songs that I like. If I don’t like a song, it doesn’t get any rating and eventually won’t get on my iPod unless I choose to do something special.

I currently rate songs with grades from C- to A+. So my mapping in iTunes is:

5 stars = A+
4 stars = A, A-
3 stars = B+, B
2 stars = B-, C+
1 star = C, C-
no stars = < C-

I’m also going to have to get an external hard drive for my computer at home. My iPod has 30 Gig, my laptop had 5.8 gig free before I started to rip my discs.