Album Rating is adding undesired songs to Smart Playlists

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Level 1

5 points

Album Rating is adding undesired songs to Smart Playlists

I have a Smart playlist of:

music
checked items
Rating - is - 4 Stars

Songs with no Rating (0 stars) are showing up in this playlist. I have noticed that the undesired songs have an Album Rating of 4 stars.

As a criteria for the Smart playlist I can select Album Rating, but have not added it as a criteria, because I do NOT want Album Ratings.

I have tried removing/clearing the Album Rating, but to no avail. Please fix the bug of Smart playlist accepting/using the "Album Rating" attribute as/along with/like the "Rating" attribute.

Henry

OS: Win 10

iTunes: 12.9.x.x

iPod Classic

Posted on Jul 29, 2019 9:03 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

turingtest2

Level 10

274,588 points

Jul 29, 2019 9:11 AM in response to INS1

The hollow stars are autoratings generated because some of the tracks on the album have been rated. If you rate an album as 3 stars all unrated tracks get a 3 star autorated track rating. If you rate one track from an album as 2 stars, and another as 4, leave the rest undated, the album gets autorated to 3 stars (the average of all manually rated tracks).

iTunes generates these autoratings on the fly. To clear them use my scripts ClearAlbumAutoRating and/or ClearTrackAutoRating which sets manual values of 1%. There are corresponding scripts to reset things if you want.

There currently seems to be another issue where syncing after tracks have been rated on a device may cause an album to gain a full rating. Hopefully Apple are aware of this issue and will resolve in a later build, but keep an eye out for unwanted changes.

tt2

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Answer 2

INS1 Author

Level 1

5 points

Jul 29, 2019 9:49 AM in response to turingtest2

I understand the autorating "thing". I don't use it, but I can see where others might, and I can see where one might find it useful.

I have never rated an album, and have no desire (at the moment) to rate one, but the autorated (undesired) songs are the ones showing up in my playlists.

My Undesired Songs = The "other" songs on an album that have an average rating (grey stars vs blue stars [Win 10]) of the songs I have rated on the album.

To me only Rated, not Album Rating NOR autorated, songs should be added to a smart playlist that is looking for "Rating" to be at some value. If I wanted those songs too, I would have added the criteria to include them.

I'm about to start using "Description" to write my rating to and build my Smart playlists off of that field. At least then I'm fairly certain it won't get messed up (or at least not as easily), but it will be a fair amount of work/effort.

I'll try your ClearAlbumAutoRating script tonight, but I'm not hopeful at the moment.

Henry

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Answer 3

INS1 Author

Level 1

5 points

Jul 29, 2019 2:53 PM in response to INS1

Tried 2 of your scripts.

Still wish/hope Apple will fix the bug/issue.

Your scripts do look to be working, tried a dozen or so small batches.

Now doing my whole library (15.5k+ songs) now.

ClearAlbumAutoRating is only finding one or two here and there that need adjusting, in the small batches. (Library runtime of 2 min 50 sec)

ClearTrackAutoRating is finding a few that don't need adjusting, in the small batches. (Library runtime of 4 min 47 sec)

Henry

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Album Rating is adding undesired songs to Smart Playlists

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