Does Anyone Pick "Like It" for Zune's Rating System?

[David Tucker]

<em>&ldquo;Earlier this week, Zune product manager Cesar Menendez confirmed on his Zune Insider blog that Microsoft will introduce a new rating system for songs. Instead of the five star system that's been in place on iTunes, Zune, the Windows Media Player, and just about every other music software from the beginning of time, Zune is moving to a simple binary system. If you like a song, it gets a heart. If you don't, it gets a broken heart.&rdquo; &ndash; <a href="http://crave.cnet.com/8301-1_105-9813693-1.html">Matt Rosoft, Crave</a></em><br /><br />I understand that some people use the rating system extensively. I don&rsquo;t, personally. I have always wondered what the point was. On Yahoo, if I rate music, they gave me music suggestions. But it was always very difficult for me to decide. Is this song a 3 star or a 4 star? What about a 5 star? And why would I ever want to rate a song 2 stars over 1 star? I don&rsquo;t want to hear songs that are 2 stars any more than 1 star. I think Ceaser explains Microsoft&rsquo;s reasoning very well.<br /><br /><em> &ldquo;And when we asked users if they would rate content using the existing system, 90% said that they wouldn&rsquo;t. So we had to figure out a way to implement a rating system that users both understood and would be likely to use. We tested several different variations, and in the end users gravitated towards the heart/broken heart system, as it put track ratings into more human terms. Hence, the new rating system.&rdquo; &ndash; <a href="http://zuneinsider.com/archive/2007/11/06/like-it-don-t-like-it-the-new-zune-rating-system.aspx">Ceaser Menendez, Zune Insider</a></em><br /><br />With all due respect to those of you who painstakingly rate your music, you are in the minority it would appear. While I have different degrees of liking my music (some I love, some I just like), it all boils down to if I like it at all, its on my Zune. If I don&rsquo;t like it, I take it off. I think this is a big deal being made over nothing. If you&rsquo;re using the ratings to filter your music, it&rsquo;s just as easy to create playlists to do the same thing.<br /><br />I&rsquo;ve seen people who say they use the rating system to create playlists that differentiate between genres. The most common example is soundtracks. I&rsquo;m a big fan of anime soundtracks myself and I understand the desire to listen to music like that separate from the rock that I have. But the solution is pretty simple. I have an &quot;Anime Soundtrack&quot; playlist to solve that problem. I don&rsquo;t understand the need to rate music like that differently when you have playlists for it.<br /><br />I think Microsoft got this right. The people complaining right now are the people who relied on the old system. But most people don&rsquo;t care to get that granular. It&rsquo;s a waste of time when I&rsquo;m at work and a track comes up to try and give every song a rating out of 5. I don&rsquo;t want to sit there every time I hear something I like and ponder the merits of how many stars I should give it. If I like it, that&rsquo;s all I need to know.

[Ricardo Dawkins]

The people complaining are using the current system for something else besides rating. That is why they are mad.

I LIKE THE NEW SYSTEM. Simple, clean and straighforward.

[David Tucker]

That's the trend I noticed too. "I use the rating system to flag songs that are my wife's so I don't delete them from the PC" "I flag songs that are x genre" and so on.

Just use the built in playlists and song flagging (is song flagging still in Zune 2G?) for that. I personally look forward to having a simple rating system. For all the people who claim 5 stars is the de facto standard for everything I'd say the most famous rating system is Siskel & Ebert's "Two Thumbs Up".

[ale_ers]

I like that they simplified the system, however, yes or no is too simple. I wish they at least had 3 choices.

And to everyone who says that there are 3 choices Yes, no or no rating...how do you differentiate a no rating from songs you just have not rated yet?

[ale_ers]

For all the people who claim 5 stars is the de facto standard for everything I'd say the most famous rating system is Siskel & Ebert's "Two Thumbs Up".

Yes, but that was 3 ratings: two up, two down, one up one down (actually there was a fourth depending on who was up and down.) I think 3 levels would be perfect.

[USArcher]

All I want is consistency as to how the ratings are displayed on Zune, Media Center and on Extenders like XBox.

[jm]

Yes, but that was 3 ratings: two up, two down, one up one down (actually there was a fourth depending on who was up and down.) I think 3 levels would be perfect.

Don't forget "Two thumbs way up(down)". That makes 5 levels.

[Alber1690]

I did too think that rating music was a waste of time; too much music to go through each and rate (much like Windows Photo Gallery allows you to rate pictures, I just find that too useless). But, then after I started listening to playlists I created, I kinda thought that having the songs within the playlist organized in an order would have been nice. So that's how I began to rate some of my music, so I guess it is kind of useful. Nevertheless, no matter how unimportant to most people the rating system is, I agree with most people on two arguments they're making:

If it's just a "like it" or "hate it" kind of deal, why would you even have a "hate it" category? I understand why some websites employ that kind of system, but that's because you're just commenting on it, it's not on your computer already. So, unless you download a lot music and sync it to your MP3 without much attention, and you happen to listen to the music and find a song you don't like and would want to delete it next time, then that would make sense. But how many people actually do that, not many enough to change the whole system I would say.
USArcher made a great point; this is going to cause a great deal of inconsistency between Zune, Windows Explorer, Windows Media Player, Windows Media Center, and the Xbox. What are they going to display if the meta data for the song is "love it" or "hate it"?

[David Tucker]

If it's just a "like it" or "hate it" kind of deal, why would you even have a "hate it" category? I understand why some websites employ that kind of system, but that's because you're just commenting on it, it's not on your computer already. So, unless you download a lot music and sync it to your MP3 without much attention, and you happen to listen to the music and find a song you don't like and would want to delete it next time, then that would make sense. But how many people actually do that, not many enough to change the whole system I would say.

That's exactly what I do and I don't understand why people wouldn't do this. If you have the Zune Pass, what better way to discover music? I'm sure I have tracks I still haven't heard yet as I can sit down on any given night and just decide I'm going to add 5 albums. I probably won't listen to them that moment as I don't have time to sit around for a couple hours and parse through all the new music before adding it to my device. I listen to a sample and if it sounds good I add the whole library from that artist. Then I might find I hate half their music when I hear it the next day at work.

USArcher made a great point; this is going to cause a great deal of inconsistency between Zune, Windows Explorer, Windows Media Player, Windows Media Center, and the Xbox. What are they going to display if the meta data for the song is "love it" or "hate it"?


It might. I'm still not sure what the huge deal is...its just the music's rating scale.

[Sven Johannsen]

What I find irritating is the continual asault on my freedom. We have a great new way of living life and you need to conform to it. We like it, so everyone else must. I'll not go into the multitude of user options that have been eliminated from WM. What the heck would be wrong with giving the user a choice, a drop down box asking, hey, you can use the great new binary bleeding heart system, the 5 star one you are used to, or pick a scale of 1-10 if you like.

So what if users are using the rating system for something else, like seperating the wife's music from mine, setting up 8M player vs 80M player lists, and other clever implementations. Fact is you have trashed these options and are forcing folks to succumb to your views of how it should be done. Bet I don't even get a choice as to whether I want to upgrade or not. :mad:

They asked users how it should be? Heart, cracked heart? What was the focus group, 13 year old girls?

[Alber1690]

They asked users how it should be? Heart, cracked heart? What was the focus group, 13 year old girls?

LOL! Good question though.


@David: See, that's what I'm trying to say. For people like you, who have a Zune Pass or download and sync loads of music at a time, it's a pretty darn good system. Yet, are there enough of anybody to have decided to change the "most common" 5-star system to anything else? Well, in the end, I won't end up really caring, but I would like to know how I'm going to organize songs within a playlist if all I'm goint to have is a broken and whole heart. Nevertheless, this whole "love or hate" system might end up having a greater importance than we think. Think about The Social and how people will like to share music through their profiles; this kind of system would be something Microsoft would like to make very familiar to Zune users, for it to become a sort of "zune thing," something that people will associate with Zune. Maybe not as big as "Digg it", but that's what I'm kind of trying to explain. Otherwise, why would Cesar go so into detail about clarifying this new rating system?

PS: I rate the new rating system 3.5 stars...lol.

[David Tucker]

Al, I don't know if there is or not. I don't really think that was even the main part of the thought process. Microsoft simply noticed that for the past year that most people weren't using the rating system. Maybe this will change things. I think it will for me.

[Sven Johannsen]

Microsoft simply noticed that for the past year that most people weren't using the rating system.
How the heck would they know if I'm using the rating system. I buy CDs, I rip them with Media Player, rate, them, play them in the MCE machines around the house, sync them to my Windows Mobile devices using MP (and AS/WMDC) sync them to my Media Center Portable from the MCE interface, sync them to my Plays-For-Sure capable Creative Audio player, and Oh-BTW, make the Zune software update yet another DB of my music on my PC just so I can load it on my Microsoft Zune. I could give a rats ___ about the Social and letting the world know how I feel about my music. I don't buy music online, been bit by that in the past. I'll listen to clips and then go buy the CD. Maybe I'm not the target, but I have the money.

So I guess I don't get it. "Most people aren't using the rating system". So why would MS care. Are they concerned about the poor user who is too confused by a 5 point scale. They figure they can't just pick 1 or 5 if gray areas are too tough. One through five, oh my, I'm so confused, is it a 4 or a 5? What does 3 mean? It's like nothing, man.

You know, if you gave me a 1-5 sliding scale of how I feel about this latest intrusion on my lifestyle, I would probably give it a 3. In the scheme of things it's an irritant, not really worth the effort to argue about it. BUT since I apparently only get two options....I HATE it.

I'm getting real close to cancelling my pre-ordered Zune-II over this and finding a player that works with Media Player directly. Thing is the one I ordered is green...and I Love green.

[David Tucker]

Breathe man, breathe. :cool:

[BugDude10]

First, when did this become a problem? Were there customers complaining about having too many rating options in the five-star system? I seriously doubt it. ANd even if the Zune design team members don't use a five-star system, why would Microsoft want to *limit* my options rather than expand them?

If a user doesn't use any rating system, then the change isn't going to affect him or bother him; if he does, though, and it has more than just two choices, then this is going to screw up his system, and for what purpose? Is there something in the Zune OS that will result in improved performance somehow by keeping track of only two options for a track versus five? If you want to use only two ratings to represent "like it" or "hate it", you could choose five stars or one star (or five stars or unrated). But some of us prefer more gradiations: five starts for the very best, four for thoroughly enjoyable, three for okay, two for not wretched, and one for "wouldn't care if they accidentally got deleted from my hard drive". Some programs -- including Microsoft's own WMP! -- will let you auto-assemble playlists based on your ratings: maybe you want a random playlist of only your very favorites (just the five stars), or you want to give some of your less-favorites (two- or three-star tracks) a second chance. Maybe you want to slap together a playlist by sorting your library by rating, then picking & choosing what you want to add. The point is, though, that you have these options with a five-star system, but not with a two-choice system.

Further, I don't buy tracks, I buy discs. That means that I won't have *just* songs I love in my collection -- I will have songs I love, some I'm thrilled to discover, and some I will be disappointed with. A more substantial rating system will let me deal with this reality. If a user buys only those tracks that he loves, then only his favorite songs will end up on his player; presumably, the "hate it" option would be used only for those tracks he gets from another Zuner, which he would presumably promptly delete once he realized he hated it.

Finally, I thought I was supposed to "make it me": I'm not just a "love it" / "hate it" guy -- some I love, some I like, some I tolerate, and the rest I can live without. Why wouldn't Microsoft want me to be a Zune customer?

David, there is certainly nothing wrong with you choosing not to use any rating system for your music collection, but why would anyone support a decision to limit options rather than expand them? And I'm at a loss to understand your comment that "It’s a waste of time when I’m at work and a track comes up to try and give every song a rating out of 5. I don’t want to sit there every time I hear something I like and ponder the merits of how many stars I should give it." I will occasionally load up the now-playing list on my PC with a handful of albums just for the purpose of checking out the quality of the tunes while I'm doing something else; I will also load a couple of albums on my Clix to rate while I'm out walking the dog. If you don't want to rate your tracks, then don't. And if you want to use only two options, don't limit mine.

Just my $0.02.

[David Tucker]

Bug, it all depends on what Microsoft's plans are with the rating system. Right now, for me, the rating system is worthless beause I get no return on it. I can rate all the songs I want but why bother? I don't use WMP to group them by rating and I certainly don't care to rate them for my own personal gratification. However, as I've said before, when I used Yahoo's music subscription service, I could actually get music suggestions based entirely on my ratings.

And then I DID rate music. And it was actually difficult to decide on the difference between 3, 4, & 5 for me since it had an affect on what my suggestions were. If Microsoft is planning to actually DO something with the rating system, then that's why I care. If they're not doing anything, then no, you're all right, they shouldn't have changed it. But as it was, I didn't like it for any purpose but would have dutifully used it if neccessary.

I'm operating under the assumption that Microsoft has a reason they want people to use the rating system. If they do have one, then I have no problem with it being something that a majority of the people want.

[boeinguy2]

I was on of the few, apparently, who found the 1-5 scale useful. I had over 4000 songs in my collection carefully rated so that I could remove some (like the 'Intro' that lasts 30 secs). I had those that I would have listened to at any time or any place, those I liked enough to build into play lists, etc.

Anyway, all that hard work and now it is all gone, converted for me before I knew what happened. Thanks again to Microsoft for making my decisions for me.

I really enjoy my Zune. Why did they have to mess with this aspect that did not really make a better user experience or deliver more features.

I am also frustrated that I cannot flag songs anymore. Some tunes did not rip well and I need to fix them. I discover this as I listen, and I used the flag system to mark those that needed repairing. Now all of that is gone too.:(