Musical Review

I've recently embarked on a project that's going to take me many, many months to complete: re-rating all my MP3s. I have over 11,000. I realize that for some of you with your 250 GB server drives stuffed with stuff you've never even listened to, this might not seem like much. I am convinced, however, that this is significantly above the norm. According to iTunes, I could just click play and walk away for well over a month of continuous tunes with no repeats, running 24/7. Indeed, I believe it took me around seven months to listen to them all and rate them the first time around.

So why am I doing this? Why go to the trouble? Well, I've decided that whatever "system" I was using to rate them before doesn't cut it. That system was basically, "Ooo! I really love this song! 5 stars!" or "Ooo! I really like this song! 4 stars!" and so forth. Shouldn't that cut it? It's my music collection, right?

Well, here's the problem (if indeed that's the right word). Less than 1% of my collection is rated 1 star. And this stands to reason -- why would I fill my player with songs I don't like? Conversely, nearly 20% of my collection is clumped up in this too-large-to-be-quite-useful clump of 5 star songs. Basically, Apple and/or Microsoft saw fit to give me five different levels of rating, and I've only used four of them. So I've decided it will be worthwhile to basically spread things out.

I've also decided that I need a bit more of a "plan" this time, if I'm really going to spend the rest of this year and then some re-rating songs. I'm going to share what I've worked out here as I'm getting started. Maybe you'll think it's cool and use it for yourself. Or maybe you'll share insights on the system you use for MP3 ratings, and I can incorporate any good ideas now and save myself another huge chunk of time later.

What I've come up with is pretty simple, actually -- but a bit more precise than "how much do I like this song?" I believe the question to ask is: "How often would I want to hear this song?"

In my book, the 5 star songs are the ones I really could listen to every day and not see myself getting tired of them. Real cream of the crop stuff. 4 stars are songs I could listen to once a week. 3 stars, once a month. 2 stars, once a quarter. 1 star, once a year is enough.

The way it's been shaping up so far, 1 star is still going to be one of the smallest categories -- but already I'm putting more songs there than I had before. (There are plenty of songs I don't dislike enough to delete, but I don't want to listen to them often either.) And things are definitely decompressing off the top of the scale.

I'm also finding this rating system to be a much better blend of the objective and the subjective. I've been coming across a lot of songs I'd rated 3 stars before -- sometimes even 4 -- that were clearly rated so highly because "I love this band! Even if I don't particularly like this song of theirs." Now, my love of a given artist is more effectively removed from the equation in my mind. Would I want this song to come bubbling back to the top of the playlist again any time soon? No? 1 star!

Admittedly, Christmas music is a bit of a wrinkle in this scheme. But I have all my main playlists configured to ignore Christmas music for the bulk of the year anyway. I figure I can work out what to do with those several months from now.

So there it is. I'm probably putting way more thought into all this than most people do.