iPodding With The Stars

January 28, 2006 9:27 AM

I have a 3G iPod 20GB, been working great for 2 years now. I am an avid song rater, and I always find myself going to rate songs, only to find out I already rated them! (I have my iPod docked in my car so its easy to rate songs while listening). So, is there a software hack out there that will allow me to see the rating of a song while it is playing?
posted by Chuck Cheeze to Technology (7 answers total)

Best answer: I'm quite anal about my music collection and make sure that every single song in my collection is properly tagged and rated. I never need to worry about your problem because I know what I'm listening to already has a rating.

Using smart playlists, nothing makes it to my iPod that has a rating lower than 3 stars in the first place. (And if I decide, on the go, that I don't like a song as much as I thought I did... I give it a ranking of 2 or lower, and on the next update, the song is automatically no longer on the 'pod)

Any time I add new music to my library, it's automatically added to a smart playlist for songs with no rating. This makes it easy to sort through the songs that don't have ratings yet. I can just load that playlist up in Party Shuffle to sort through it, and recently I have just added it to the iPod as well for when I feel like listening to new music -- and again, I don't have a problem like yours, because if I want to rate a song from that playlist, I know it doesn't have one already.
posted by Robot Johnny at 10:21 AM on January 28, 2006

Response by poster: Thanks RJ great suggestions. I have thought about only bringing 3* and higher songs to the iPod, but I have 2 ways I listen to music generally: 1) Random all/artist/genre or 2) Full albums.

The problem this presents is that even if a song comes up on random that I rate at 2* because I really don't care to listen to it much, if I am listening to the album it belongs to, I definately want it in there. Kind of a rock & a hard place there.
posted by Chuck Cheeze at 10:53 AM on January 28, 2006

Don't know about the 3G but with the 5G clicking the center button cycles while playing cycles between current position in song, star rating, and rewind/fast forward.

Takes a couple of clicks to do it, but the option is there.
posted by caution live frogs at 10:54 AM on January 28, 2006

Response by poster: Mine is the same, I can click the center button to rate songs, but that is my problem...I will be listening and click it to rate it, to find out it is already rated. That's why I would like an indicator on the default playing screen that shows the rating.
posted by Chuck Cheeze at 11:06 AM on January 28, 2006

It sounds like you want a hack on the default layout. The most extensive hack I've seen are the theme hacks via iPodWizard and even then those are just replacing the icons, fonts, text, and graphics. I'm pretty sure there's no hacks out there to actually change the layout to include the rating next to the song name. Even if there were, you'd be losing a lot of space for the song title just to accomodate the five stars.
posted by junesix at 11:46 AM on January 28, 2006

I think your only choice is to pester Steve Jobs.
Either that, or pester the iPod Linux and Rockbox-iPod guys, and ply them with gifts.
posted by Good Brain at 12:13 PM on January 28, 2006

Best answer: CC, I'd recommend created an "unrated" smart playlist like Robot Johnny uses. Force yourself to listen to it, and if you are indeed an avid song rater that playlist will empty itself in a few weeks. I know it's not quite what you were asking for, but it is a solution of sorts...
posted by danb at 1:27 PM on January 28, 2006