The Daily Ping

Yesterday, Paul wrote about how he doesn’t rate his music. As a counter-point, I would like to write about how I’m the exact opposite of Paul and, therefore, he is very wrong.

I’m pretty obsessive about rating my music collection. The primary reason is that I have a few auto (smart) playlists that are based on these ratings. For instance:

• “Favorites” feature songs rated 4, 4.5, or 5 stars. The best of the best. There are more specific playlists for favorites within certain genres.
• Another playlist features everything 3.5 stars and higher. A 3.5 rating means it’s not a favorite song, but I like it enough to want it showing up in a more general shuffle play scenario.
• I have separate playlists set up specifically for unrated songs.

Below 3.5, my general approach is as follows:

• 3 stars: It’s an OK song, but I don’t like it enough to want it coming up on shuffle play. It’s still worth hearing as part of a full album, though.
• 2.5 stars and below: Pretty crap, but again, possibly worth hearing as part of a whole album.
• 1 star: I’ll often give interludes and skits 1 star not necessarily because they’re bad, but just to indicate, “Hey, it’s OK to skip this track when you’re listening to an album because it’s just a stupid 10 second skit.”
• Bomb and .5 stars I use to build “The worst music I own” playlist, which is some pretty funny, terrible stuff.

Out of 58,398 tracks in my library, 9900 are rated. The breakdown is as follows:

• 5 stars: 488 tracks
• 4.5 stars: 993
• 4 stars: 4219
• 3.5 stars: 2310
• 3 stars: 1329
• 2.5 stars: 173
• 2 stars: 285
• 1.5 stars: 89
• 1 star: 27
• .5 star: 8
• * Bomb (0 stars): 19

So, in conclusion, at the end of the day, to sum up: I’m right because I am and, as a result, therefore, Paul’s wrong for doing it his way.

Posted in Television, Movies, and Music