thinking about auto-rating

[egypturnash]

The other day I was discussing the management of music libraries with zenmouse. (And many other things, but I'm thinking about that right now.)

I noted that a lot of people like to use iTunes' "star" rating as a tool to manage their playlists, but my tracks are completely unstarred. I don't want to go through some 7200 files and rank them against each other!

What I really need is an easy way to casually categorize them as they flow by. What I really need is a way for the data to bubble up from my usage patterns - a tune I regularly pick myself is probably a favorite, for instance.

Ideally, I feel that I'd start by rating the entire collection as 'meh' - 3/5 stars - and wire things up such that every time I select a track, or skip one, the rating changes a little bit; over time favorites would bubble up, and disfavorites would bubble down.

I've been toying with the thought of hacking the scripts Quicksilver uses to remote-control iTunes, since that's my primary interface. Unfortunately it's not my only interface; I never, ever, ever pick a track by bringing up QS, typing 'i, t, right-arrow' and using QS's interface to iTunes' catalog.

* I need to add a "skip album" keystroke, for one thing. I find myself popping up iTunes for the sole purpose of doing that when an album that doesn't suit my mood comes up, since I run in 'random by album' mode these days.
* The "skip track" keystroke needs to not just skip a track, but ding its rating.
* Should the "skip album" keystroke ding the ratings of every track in the album?
* Can I wire a script up to 'track played all the way through'? This would be a great place to hang a 'rating+' routine.
* I know that while iTunes exposes the rating as 1-5 stars, it keeps track of it as 0-100. What values should I use for 'track played' and 'track skipped'?
* I need to see if I can get the source for QS's iTunes plugin and hack around.
* upon track skip/track completion: if (rating == 0) rating = 50, then do track playthrough/skipped bits.

Comments

[packbat.livejournal.com]

Hmm ... I know iTunes only increments the play count when it hits the end of the track – does that count?

I think 'track chosen' should probably have a significantly higher value than 'track skipped' – after all, there are multiple tracks you might choose at any time, dividing the probability that you'll choose *that* one.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Nah, I want to make it explicitly bring the rating up when I finish a track.

I figure that if I end up building this, there will be an interface somewhere that exposes the values, and lets the user control how much 'pick a track', 'skip a track', and so on are worth.

[krinndnz.livejournal.com]

I hope you'll let us know how it goes. I usually base iTunes playlists on a combination of rating and play count.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

I found an Applescript that claimed to do this sort of auto-rating stuff, but it just sat there and did nothing when I tried it out.

unrelated

[krinndnz.livejournal.com]

Glee! You added more cute spiders to the layout!

Re: unrelated

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

They show up in the headers of alllll my replies to mark them as FROM ME. I should probably draw something specific for it instead of using the frontpage spider...