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Tools to Enjoy Music - iTunes song ratings

*** Part of an ongoing series of TOOLS TO ENJOY MORE MUSIC *****
I will attempt to profile great avenues of finding, listening to, and downloading new music, to help you, the music fan, get more out of your listening experience.

I really have no idea how other devices work for ratings.  iTunes on the other hand, I am very familiar with.  I highly recommend it as it is a tremendous music warehouse/software, which as long as you can get past their previous DRM sins and their mass corporate practices does wonders as you really learn to use it.  Earlier today, I posted about a Smart Playlist consisting of any Dave Matthews format, and ***** songs.  This only works though if you rate your music. 

I really feel that if you don't rate your music, you are better off listening to discs or tapes. You might as well listen to some format that doesn't have sorting or browsing.  If you get into a larger collection, it's a must for many reasons.  First, why keep the crap.  Second, how do you remember if there is something wrong with the track?   Third, "Best of" playlists are great.  

So, let me begin to review my music rating system.  iTunes uses 5 starts, so of course, that is what I am limited too.  *****(5 stars) of course is reserved for the best!  Let me however, skip to *(1 star) for some clarity, as I think it's foolish to think there are 5 complete levels of song quality, 4 even is a stretch, but it works.  *(1 star) is reserved for those songs or podcasts that need to go, and get out of here.  These songs need to be deleted forever!  Simple right?

**(2 starts) is reserved for tracks with something wrong.  Realize you album is out of order?  Is the wrong artist or song title listed?  Is there a giant skip in the song?  Do you need to mark the song to remember to never play it in front of your mom again?  Is half of the song missing?  Whatever the reason... these songs have an issue, and you need to mark it somehow, so you don't bang your head against a wall each and every time you listen to it. 

So, that leaves ***(3 stars) and ****(4 stars).  Simply put, ***** are the best.  **** are solid, but not the best, and *** is everything else that is being kept.  Simple right?  Now you don't have to agonize over, the critical aspects of a song to determine if it is a 2, 3, or 4 stars... Instead, spend more time rating songs that aren't rated. 

I hope this helps! Enjoy!

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