Open discussion: Do you use ratings? Should the system be changed? (2 Viewers)

[rtv]

Hi!

While I find myself pretty often pressing a quick 1-5 on my remote in "Playing Now" to rate a particular song I realized that I do not very often rate full albums, use ratings for views, etc.

Furthermore there's some redundant functionality with the Set favorite feature. While this can be used nicely with audioscrobbler and random tracks I often neglect it because there's no visible indicator for favorite or not favorite.

To sum things up: both implementations are neither consistent nor complete.

Some time ago I already had some thoughts about implementing a last.fm like easier rating system which only offers "ban" / "unrated" / "love" and displays all items accordingly.

Now I've stumpled upon some changes that were made to M$ Zune's rating system:
http://zuneinsider.com/archive/2007/11/06/like-it-don-t-like-it-the-new-zune-rating-system.aspx

It basically reflects the same feelings I got from our 5 Star rating system. However - many comments on this article indicate that users aren' that happy with the new system.

So please tell us what do you think about the rating, how do you use it, how could it be better?

 

[mzemina]

Well Tivo has the simple thumbs-up/down system (I don't know if they have a trademark or patent on it). But I would like simple system that just "watched" how many times I listen and if I listen to the complete track or take control and jump to the next track. Wouldn't that be enough to determine if the song is a like or dislike? Then the user doesn't have to actually make any choice.

 

[SpudR]

Personally I NEVER use the rating system.
If I don't like a track it gets nuked.
If I do like a track it stays.

I would like the option to disable the ratings altogether (if possible)

If you do want/need the ratings it might be better to implement a 1-10 level to better identify the tracks (0-5 is way too limiting IMHO)

 

[tomtom21000]

personally, I never use the favourites feature (it is binary, too: favorite/non favorite)
I am quite happy with the 1-5 stars.
I think a binary system "like/don´t" like is useless, not enough distinctions for a couple of thousand songs.

but I never knew that I could rate an album, so maybe the whole function is not clear enough yet.

tomtom

 

[Bagal]

I think it's partly down to knowing that the functionality is there, I didn't know I could press 1-5 while a song was playing so maybe I'll start using it now that I know.

Personally I'd like a couple of systems, a rating system along the line of don't like/ok/like and also another that remembers the number of times I play a song/album etc and can automatically rate on that (though this would probably need to ignore when I randomly play the entire library, such as when using audioscrobbler otherwise some tracks could get promoted to the top of the list that I don't want to be there).

 

[zag2me]

I use the ratings system and love it. I never feel the need for any other system other than a 1-5 score especially on Music CD Maxi singles that I listen to alot.

What would be good is a charting feature that could show your most played songs inside MP, categorize by top 5 stars via the genre, and upload the results to a custom website so users could share this with each other(like last.fm but aimed at media-portal users).

 

[Bagal]

(like last.fm but aimed at media-portal users).

There is a Media Portal last.fm group, which might be what you're looking for.

 

[The_Stig]

I voted for preferring Star ratings for a reason: I use star ratings very much with my iTunes&iPod. Then its very nice to use intelligent playlists based on these ratings (e.g. all 5-star-songs with genre jazz).
Since we don't have these intelligent playlists (yet) in MP, I don't use ratings in MP. But in general, as a concept, I like the Star-Concept pretty much more, since it gives more options.

 

[Arn01805]

I'd like to have star ratings 0-5 stars, it gives more flexibility as ban/love. This moment I use favorits, but if the star-ratings can be written to the mp3 tags from within MP(Wow.. i'd love to see a tagwriter/editor in MP ;-)), I'll start to use the ratings.

 

[daniel_1980]

I use no ratings, I don't need any additional functionality except playing the media-files.