My main disappointment with My Ratings after buying iPod was that I did not find a way to activate shuffle play such that iPod would play songs with ***** rating 5x more than those with * rating. From some article about iPod I had got the idea that it would.
This is certainly something that I would want to see, and still in the current product as a downloadable SW, as there is no hope I would buy a new iPod just for that...
There isn't an easy way to do this. Some people have experimented with applescripts to simulate a radio station rotation, but the solutions I've seen do not include multiple plays of a single song. They just play more high rated songs than low rated.
by dfbills on Dec 30, 03 | 9:33 pm
Clarification: I did not mean that a song with 5-star rating would play 5 times in a row, just that a song with such rating would play 5 times as often compared to a song with 1-star rating.
If as you said: "radio station rotation solution" that plays "more high rated songs than low rated songs" exists, I would be definitely interested!
Restriction, however: I'm running iTunes on WinXP.
by migao on Dec 31, 03 | 5:24 am
Unfortunately, the solution I was talking about requires AppleScript, which is unavailable on WinXP.
I'm sure someone will come up with a way to manipulate playlists in iTunes on WinXP at some point, but I haven't seen it yet.
by dfbills on Jan 01, 04 | 12:22 pm
Manual playlists allow you to add songs more than once. You could make a smart list for each rating 1-5. Then drag all of the files from the 5 star into a manual list 5 times. Do same 4 times with the 4 star, etc. When you add new music, wipe the manual list and drag again.
Its not a perfect solution but you will have a playlist which will play a higher rated song proportionately more.
by Mike M on Jan 03, 04 | 11:30 pm
That would work, in fact you could create a few smart playlists for each star value and drag the contents into a regular playlist as many times as you'd like.
by dfbills on Jan 04, 04 | 4:36 pm
Hmm, indeed I think this is not a perfect solution, actually I did not want to start using it. Reason: it does not update at all. While adding new songs all the time, and rating (and re-rating) always when traveling (but never when using iPod in home stereo), automatic update is absolutely needed. More suggestions thus welcome!
by migao on Jan 07, 04 | 2:56 pm
Weighted play by ratings is absolutely the key to making your iPod a true personal radio station.
This is also not a perfect solution, but here's what I do. I have a smart playlist for 5 star songs that have not been played in the last 7 days. I have another smart playlist for 4 star songs that have not been played in the last month. I have another for 3 star songs not played in the last 90 days, another for 2 stars not played in 6 months, and another for 1 star songs not played in a year.
Lastly, I have what I call a weighted random playlist of songs that are in any of those 5 smartplaylists. It's taken a while for me to figure out the right length between plays to set for the different ratings, but I think what I've described above is working pretty well. The problem with this system is that automatic update doesn't work for playlists that reference other playlists on the iPod. It works in iTunes, so I would hope this is a bug they'll eventually fix on the iPod.
There isn't an easy way to do this. Some people have experimented with applescripts to simulate a radio station rotation, but the solutions I've seen do not include multiple plays of a single song. They just play more high rated songs than low rated.