8,500 fucking songs in iTunes. 8,500 songs.
Weekdays, I come home from work and I have to make dinner, and sometimes I like a little music in the background to keep me from dwelling too much on the shit rattling around in my head at the end of the day. So, I crank up the laptop, and tell iTunes to shuffle those 8,500 fucking songs. Well, fine - but a bunch of those songs are things like Sonic Youth's Bad Moon Rising, which I can only listen to if the stars are aligned just right; or lame-ass latter-day Van Halen albums that I know I'll never listen to, but got in a batch deal along with all their early stuff, and I can't bear to delete cause what if someone comes over really wants to hear Poundcake; or they're from a half-dozen crappy Doors bootlegs; or a bunch of my own stupid stuff that I'll never play for anyone else, but keep archived just 'cause; or mothafukkin You Can't Always Get What You Want, which I never want to hear again, ever, but shows up on a half-dozen different Stones' records, and iTunes doesn't give you a way to share individual songs between albums so I gotta keep six copies, if I want to preserve the albums' structures; or the annoying little turds bands smear between real songs (Haha, Unrest and your Volume Reference Tone song, good one). I don't want to hear any of that crap. I need a filter.
iTunes allows you to make playlists, of course. But to me, that defeats the point of shuffle. If I wanted to manually choose what I wanted to hear, I'd just go ahead and do that. Maybe what iTunes needs is a way to mark songs with a flag that says: "when I choose Shuffle, never play this song." That would help a lot - I could build anti-lists to filter out crap I don't want to hear after work, or to filter crap I don't want to hear if I'm on the back porch drinking beers with friends, or to filter crap I don't want to hear if I'm washing my car in the driveway. But, iTunes doesn't have that feature. [Edit: it does have that feature. You may stop reading now] [Edit #2: but, you can only apply that option to one song at a time - no multi-select or by-album allowed. sigh]
So, I'm stuck with playlists. I could make a special "Cooking with Cleek" playlist, but again: manually choosing is the opposite of random (yes, I know manually choosing which to exclude is logically equivalent to choosing which to include - but I'm assuming I'll have far fewer things to exclude than include). iTunes also has something called "Smart Playlists", which let you sift and sort through your Most Frequently Played lists, through your song ratings, etc.. I rarely pick individual songs, so Most Frequent is out. And I don't rate things, so that's out too. Or is it... ? No, it's not. Friday, I started rating songs on the iPod at work. I hear 120 songs on the iPod in a typical work day - so that means it would it something like 2.5 months to rate all the songs that way. But, you can also rate them en masse in iTunes. So, I've started doing that, too. Someday, I'll have all those 8,500 fucking songs "rated" on a scale of 1 to 5 stars.
Stars? The concept of 1-5 "stars" brings up some questions:
- When I rate a song, what criteria am I using? Sometimes I hear a song and think, yes, this song speaks to me, 4 stars; or, this is fucking annoying, 1 star. Or, is this a good song for a dinner party (i.e. Will other people like this ?)
- Should my criteria stay consistent ? If so, doesn't that mean the ratings only apply to the situation I was envisioning when I applied the rating? If I rate according to "good for the back porch" metric, do those ratings mean anything anywhere else?
- Likewise, is a 3-star song a 3-star song in every situation ? Brahms is fine when I'm cooking dinner - play that 3-star concerto for piano and viola , baby. But if I'm hanging out on the porch drinking beers with friends, Brahms isn't the right music now. You only get to give one rating, though, so yes, a 3-star song is always a 3-star song. But it's clearly not. Do I smell a paradox?
- Have I over-thought this whole thing?
Yes, this is the kind of thing I spend my day thinking about. And then I write it out like anyone else wants to hear about it. What a dick. Kill me now.
This modern stuff is too confusing for me. I still just figure out what I’m in the mood for and put on an album.
I still just figure out what I’m in the mood for and put on an album
yeah, that’s probably the route i should take…
i used to do that, but then i got hooked on Shuffle.
Smart playlists are great. I have a bunch like “Added in past 4 weeks, but not played in past two” and “Not played in past 4 weeks, and rated 4-5 stars”. You can get some pretty funky mixes with them. I know this doesn’t address how to get Volume Reference Tone or Brian Jonestown’s “Sound of Confusion” off the list, but I thought I’d share anyway.
Cleek:
I’ve a pantsload of Guided by Voices bootlegs, that I find come up too much. I have a smart playlist that excludes “all Guided By Voices” and plays everything else. The other thing that I do is go through unchecking things like Unrest’s volume reference tone, tbati’s above referenced BJM atrocity and the like. You keep it, if you ever want to listen to it (but why would you) so it never comes up.
So with your stones confusion, search for “Can’t Always Get…” and uncheck repeats, or all of them. It seams cumbersome, but I’ve had pretty good luck making the random shuffle work. (I’ve 7,000 +/- on mine, too)
i just noticed that there’s a “skip when shuffling” option in Get Info / Options. excellent.
Only 8,500 songs? Wuss. :)
there’s probably another few thousand on CD’s i haven’t bothered ripping.
BTW, do you use genres at all? Couldn’t you use, for example, a smart “rock/indie” playlist for your porch-sittin’-beer-swillin’ sessions, so classical music isn’t included?
haven’t played with genres much.
a quick look shows that Sonic Youth, Elliot Smith, and Franz Ferdinand all get the label ‘Alternative’ – but i don’t see anything musically similar about those three bands.
Some more questions about ratings: which is lower, a one star rating or no rating at all? What is the approprate rating for a song you dislike?
Also, if a particular rating corresponds to a particular play frequency, how does that work? I mean, one possibility might be play frequency = (random * number of stars). But what is it really? Anyone know?
I agree with you about the Brahms thing. However, I think it’s possible to combine ratings with genre as Rob Caldecott mentioned.
Here’s another problem — my family shares an iPod so in a sense, I’m rating songs for my wife (my son doesn’t really have any taste in music, being only one year old). On the other hand, she doesn’t seem interested in rating songs herself. Should I take into account what I *think* she likes?
What is the approprate rating for a song you dislike?
i use 1 . i use 0 stars to indicate ‘not yet rated’. but, i wish there was an actual 0 star rating, because there are some songs that really deserve less than 1.
Anyone know?
not me
Should I take into account what I *think* she likes?
heh. that’s why my wife has her own computer
I found this while searching for a plugin to ITunes to fix this exact problem. What the fuck is 5 stars seriously???? I have several external hard drives full of music I haven’t listened to because ITunes can’t handle my shit. It would take me over a year to listen to all the music I have, please tell me how a 1-5 star rating is supposed to sum up what I have to say. How about a top 100 or 1000 or whatever, or how about ratings by genre, there are so many ways to evaluate a song other that a good/bad yes/no 1 star 2 star rating system.
FWIW if you use the iTunes Genius feature it would appear to update/add genres to your songs. I first noticed this after using Genius for the first time and then realised it was syncing nearly everything when I plugged in my iPod.
Might be worth a look.