JulianSchrader.de

Get your iTunes songs rated automagically

I always wished there was a simple solution to automate rating songs in iTunes. My train of thoughts looked very similar to the concept behind an application from Michael Tyson, of which I read about recently on macosxhints.com.

Since the iTunes library database already collects statistical data about plays and skips of songs, why not make use out of it and rate the songs worst that are skipped everytime they’re playing and give the most stars to the ones that were never skipped before?

Let’s see what this concept looks like all boxed into a formula:

rating = (100 * ( (play frequency – lower) / (upper – lower) ) – skips per month * 5

This is exactly the way Michael Tyson’s AutoRate works. And it works very nicely—you don’t need to change your listening habits, just play songs you like and skip the ones you don’t want to listen to at a given time.

In the beginning I’ve been a little surprised by how many songs in my library didn’t have any rating (equals zero stars), but after thinking about it this only shows me that there’s still a lot of crap in my library that needs to get cleaned out sometime, hopefully soon…

Automation

Until here, the application only works when triggered manually, there’s no automagic to it yet.

Michael thankfully provides his application with a simple AppleScript that executes the application as well as triggers the rating—combine this with a CronJob and you’re done.

This CronJob is easily created with the help of CronniX and cares for a constantly updated rating—my library get’s refreshed every day at 20pm.

Download AutoRate—you may want to try it first, so make sure to backup a copy of your iTunes library database.