October 29, 2009
I Heart Stars
Friend, entrepreneur, and well of sarcastic wit, Jacob Morse recently introduced me to a sleek little free Mac app called I Love Stars. It has a single, minimal purpose and that is to help you rate your iTunes library.
I know of very few iTunes users that have taken the time to rate their library, and even fewer that know the merits of doing it. The main benefits of having your library rated are in the making of Smart Playlists and Party Shuffles. Both create playlists based on various criteria; one such criteria being song rating. For instance, if you were suddenly hit with the urge to listen to some good jazz (some GOOD jazz), you could create a Smart Playlist of only music in the Jazz genre with a rating of 4.5 or more stars. Boom. Done. Consider yourself well-jazzed.
But of course, this only works if your library is rated. Otherwise, you would either have to manually create that playlist or just skip through the playlist when a sub-good song came on. Lame.
Ultimately, though, for 99% of people an unrated library is completely fine for their needs. And honestly, if it wasn’t for I Love Stars’ ease of use, I’d probably still have an unjudged library. But therein lies this app’s genius; it’s simplicity.
All I Love Stars does is add a slot on the taskbar along the top of Mac OS that shows the rating of whatever song you’re currently listening to if it is rated, or an empty rating slot if it isn’t. To rate a song, just click on whatever star you would like to rate it with, and you’re done.
Another very simple, but somewhat genius feature is that if you’re listening to a song that hasn’t been rated, when the song is 3/4 finished, I Love Stars will make a very subtle ring noise to remind you to rate it. At that point you’ve heard most of the song, and should have a good idea of how many stars it deserves. So get to it, man!
After installing the application, just listen to your library the same way you always do while your working or doing most anything on your computer. Spend three seconds every few minutes to rate songs as they play, and before you know it, you’re library will be largely rated. Will your life suddenly be unlocked to a completely new level of potential? No. But should the opportunity arise to take advantage of your newly rated library, you’ll be fully ready to embrace it.
I just wish I could give “How You Remind Me” 0 Stars.
Nice—thanks for the mention. I need to resurrect my blog and talk about my obsessive smart playlists.
In the meantime, this will have to do.