ReCreation :: 6794/0

ReCreation

words=>reality | thought=>action | ideas=>life

6794/0 | 52.74

Nov 17, 2005

tagged as: Music, Nerd stuff, Personal, Projects, Software, Updates

Over a year ago, I set out on a quest to rate all the songs in my iTunes library. Don't ask me why--I'm a sucker for data, so I had dreams of all the cool scripts I could write and patterns I could find if each song in my library were categorized according to how much I liked it.

I'm not sure exactly how many songs I had then, but it was probably in the vicinity of 5,000. So even if I rated one song a second, it would have taken an hour and a half. What I decided to do, though, to be fair, was to listen to each song fully before rating it. If an average song is 3 minutes, we need to multiply that 1.5 hours by 180--270 hours! I was somewhat optimistic that this 270 hours would pass by quickly while I was working or what not.

I soon discovered that rating songs one-by-one in iTunes was a somewhat inefficient task, given that the only way to rate something was to go into iTunes and click on the little star for that particular song. Not a bad method if you're already in iTunes, but if you are working on something else and would rather not have your workflow interrupted every 3 minutes, it's less than optimal. So I wrote some software (iRateTunes) that let me rate songs with keystrokes, without going to iTunes.

(I also created a little app that showed me info about my iTunes library in the OS X status bar, including the number of songs left to be rated, and the total amount of time I'd spent listening to songs in iTunes. This was so I could monitor my progress)

Still, even with these tools, it was slow going. It turned out that the mental energy required to rate song after song was somewhat exhausting, so if I could get 100 done per day, that was good. Most days I got far fewer songs rated, and some not at all, depending on the intensity required by my work. An even more exhausting task was keeping a consistent standard with which to rate the songs. There are all sorts of options--should the ratings be relative to just the songs in my library? Or should it be relative to all the songs in pop culture? Should I try to keep a nice bell curve, so that there are about as many 1-star songs as 5-star songs, and far more 3-stars than either? In the end, I'm not sure I was super-consistent.

But anyway. Today, over a year after I began, my iTunesCount status bar reads: "6794/0 | 52.74" This means that I have 6794 songs in my library, and 0 are unrated! Finally! The 52.74 lets me know that the total amount of song air time with this iTunes library is 52.74 days (I created the library in July of 2004). That's 1,265 hours! And I don't let iTunes run while I'm not there listening.

Stats per rating category:
1-star: 443 songs (6.5%)
2-star: 801 songs (11.8%)
3-star: 2752 songs (40.5%)
4-star: 1836 songs (27%)
5-star: 962 songs (14.2%)

» updated by Jonathan Lipps on November 17, 2005, at 2:09 pm

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Justin Smith:

November 17, 2005, 2:17 pm

Impressive. You are now officially a music+computer geek!

Chris Nyffeler:

November 17, 2005, 3:51 pm

That is so completly awesome. I sympathize with every aspect of this entry. Particularly about the daunting task of rating so many unrated songs. My problem is that music seems to enter my library faster than I can even listen to it all, let alone rate it. The plus side of this is that, since the music in my library is most likely something I like (I put it there), I can put it in shuffle mode (which its in 90% of the time) and often songs I havent heard before come up and I happen to like them. This is such a good feeling because its like I'm passively discovering good music! (though I guess I already discovered it, even if I havent listened to it all the way through).

Which brings me to the point that I'm not nearly as disciplined as you. I tend to rate songs in the 1st minute because I feel like I have a sense of it. A down side to rating while working, like I do, is that its harder to pay close attention to lyrical content, meaning sometimes i'll rate a stupid song high or pass over a gem because i wasnt paying close enough attention to the words.

My rating standard is pretty easy to adhere to:
5 stars - I absolutely adore it, musically and lyrically. Also I am proud to like the song (no guilty pleasures get 5 stars)
4 stars - I have some sort of good feeling toward the song and I would be happy to put it on a compilation for someone.
3 stars - I have no feelings about the song. Its a song that I'll just as likely FF'd as listen to all the way through.
2 stars - I dont really like the song, but it stays in the library (sometimes because its part of a beloved artist's catalogue, sometimes becuase I have faith that someday I will like it more)
1 star - Delete from library. Because its often a bit harder to delete songs as your listening to them (if youre in a playlist you have to switch to the library and find the song, or if you arent even using the iTunes interface and instead navigating you music with a taskbar app) I indicate a hated song with a one star. Then I can do periodic Spring cleaning on the songs I dont like.

So anyway, I dont think I'm anywhere close to being where you are. I think I have a little under 1000 songs unrated out of about 7800 (i couldnt tell you now becuase I'm on my work computer, on which i keep only about half my music).

Speaking of too much music, as of July or so, my library outgrew my iPod. The first person to get me a ≥40G iPod for Christmas wins.

Jonathan Lipps:

November 17, 2005, 4:18 pm

I like your standard, Chris, but it's a bit too strict for me. Mine would be yours with the star measurements shifted up about .5 per description. Here's mine:

5 stars - I'm pretty much always in the mood to listen to this song / I'd get really excited if it came on in a random rotation of my entire playlist / I'm very proud to like this song

4 stars - I consider this song very good, and would put it on compilations / I consider this song very good, but it's new to my library and I don't want to jump the gun by saying it's a favorite

3 stars - This song is alright. I probably wouldn't recommend it passionately, but I enjoy listening to it.

2 stars - This song is just OK. I'd just as soon FF'd as listen to it. Maybe a 60% chance of FF'd.

1 star - I don't like this song, but I'm keeping it because I own the CD and I want my whole CD library on my iTunes / The song's OK but I'd never want it to come up in a rotation (like Christmas songs for example) / It's not really a song (like language learning audio files)

Also, I don't really take lyrics into account. If I happen to know and really love a song's lyrics (e.g. Diamond Ring, by Pedro the Lion), it could bump it up. And, as often happened with Christian rock songs, if I found the lyrics particularly saccharine or irritating, the rating would be demoted for lyrical reasons. But for the most part, I was going by how the song made me feel, and the lyrics only insofar as they played into that.

Chris Nyffeler:

November 18, 2005, 8:38 pm

Good point about the lyrics.

Granted, we are listening to "pop' music, which sort of assumes that the lyrics need not be especially deep or poetic. There are quite a few songs that have cheesy or elementary lyrics that are high-rated on my iTunes because for some reason or another I just really enjoy them. Pavement/Malkmus are a good example of this because his lyrics don't "speak deeply to my soul" or anything like that, but I really enjoy them because they are smart, funny and just dont make a lot of sense in the first place.

For that reason it would be totally great to have a 6th star rating. This group would include only songs that I find self-defining (I dont mean that the music is a necessary part of my identity, but that by listening to te song you could learn something about who I am. They would be strong musically in saying something about the music I really love and also communicate something lyrically that I find espeially true.

For me, "Diamond Ring" is also a good example. I love the music and the lyrics are easily in the top 5 of all my Library. Over the Rhine's "Bothered" might be an even better example of a systematically 6-star song. The piano melody is one of the most beautiful ever and it does a superb job of pushing the profound lyrics to convy an intensly stong and definite emotional impact. The song is like a laser, with a singlar emotional focus.

But then it just goes to show that the system isnt perfect because if I were to compare the 2 songs, I would most likely put Pedro above OtR (perhaps because I am so aware of the artists' entire catalogue as well as their life and persona).

Contrarily to all this, The Shins "Young Pilgrims" is my most played song, having a good 10 plays over all other songs. That has to say something about its standing in my Library. It would not be hard for me to say it is one of my top 5-star songs. Hoowever, I don't think it is a 6-star song. Its not that important to me. I just really love to listen to it a lot.

Perhaps 6-stars is not an appropriate way to define such songs. Just some thoughts.

What's your foavorite song in your Library? And is it the most played song? If not, why not? Discuss.

Dan Daugherty:

November 19, 2005, 1:35 pm

how can you not take lyrics more seriously? The world was created with a word, it was with the challenge of the meaning of words that the serpent tempted eve and it is by the Word we are re-created. Words are intensely important and it drives me mad when people listen to music without paying attention to the words. (Please don't whistle while you read this comment, else you may be distracted from what I'm saying).

Jonathan Lipps:

November 20, 2005, 11:52 pm

Dan, I am not one of those people who "doesn't take lyrics seriously". I take words more seriously than anyone else I know. Hence my desire to speak all the languages in the world and create my own, to write poetry and prose, to persuade people with words, and all the rest...

All I was saying above was that, when rating the musicality of a song, or the average desire to listen to a song, lyrics only come into play when they are either really bad or really good. Most lyrics in the world are mediocre, but the songs they accompany might be very excellent musically. So it is not that I don't care about lyrics in principle, but rather that for the most part the lyrics are not what attract me to the songs that I like for musical/emotional reasons. It's not black-and-white, of course: as I said, some lyrics are so bad I won't listen to any music which accompanies them. And some are so good (Pedro the Lion, and Chris mentioned Over the Rhine, are good example) I can't help but love the corresponding tune.

In the end, I think it is precisely because I take lyrics seriously that I choose to ignore them when rating my music.

TJ Friesen:

November 28, 2005, 8:03 am

i don't rate anything.

Jonathan Lipps:

November 28, 2005, 8:11 am

All music is considered equal for TJ? Ha.

TJ Friesen:

November 28, 2005, 8:31 am

So what exactly do you do with 443 1-star songs. Do you just play those when you are really depressed or something? BTW, i lied about not rating anything, i just gave your post 1-star. That should start to even out all the ones you have given yourself 5's on. Ha.

Jonathan Lipps:

November 28, 2005, 8:56 am

1-star songs I only play if I'm looking for that song in particular. But usually, not at all. They're mostly there to round out the bell curve.

And you do me an injustice in suggesting that I give myself 5s on my own entries! Actually I built e4:online such that users can't rate their own stuff at all. Nor can people who aren't logged in. So unless I hack into your account (which I'm now planning on doing), it's practically impossible!