New Rating System for Zune.

[Crippler]

With the coming release of the 2nd Gen Zunes and the new Zune software, the Zune team decided to introduce a new rating system for our media. Gone is the 5 Star system we all have used for eons in just about everything that has a ratings system. Now we get a Heart system. How nice. Basically, 'Love It' (full heart) or Hate It' (broken heart). So, basically if you have any smart playlists that remove songs you rate with a 1 star or maybe sync only 4-5 star songs. Forget about it. Once you update the software, the new system will convert all your star ratings to the new heart system. A 1-2 star will be a 'Hate It' and 3-5 stars will be 'Love It'. Apparently, focus groups of Hello Kitty lovers helped with this decision. Here's what Cesar posted about the issue over on ZuneInsider.com:

Now for the backstory: I spoke with some folks on the design/dev team about this and picked up some of the reasoning and thinking behind the new rating system. Last year, we extensively tested the 0-5 star rating system with users – both on the current system and their potential usage - and learned a few interesting things. First, there was a great degree of confusion between different ratings for different users – e.g. a 3 star rating for one user might mean “I love this song” but for another user, it could mean “this song is just ok.” And when we asked users if they would rate content using the existing system, 90% said that they wouldn’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.

Come on. If it's about 'more human terms', then just change the stars into hearts so our simple minded folks can get it. Really, how hard was the old system to understand? Who are these people in these focus groups? Are they over 12 yrs old? I just find it totally nuts that MS would take a highly functional rating system and turn it into something that is only useful for people with an IQ of 20. Here's an idea, allow us to choose a rating system. 'Novice' or 'Advanced'. This would keep everyone happy and allow the 'novice' folk to step up to a real system when their brains can handle it.

I was looking forward to the new software. Not so much now.

[Peench]

Honestly, I never, ever, ever have rated a song. I just don't have the time. I figured if I don't rate anything, the randomizer thing should just play all of them randomly right?

[Lord Geoff]

I don't rate music either. The only time that I have is when we were using Yahoo Unlimited (sucks big time) here at the store. We did it with the understanding that it worked, but it didn't. We would ban a song for language, because the explicit lyric filter didn't work, hear it again and go to the computer to see that it was clearly marked banned.

The Zune software, for me, only has to do two things well. Ripping CDs and syncing. The rating system, regardless of how it works, is a non-issue for me. If I don't like something in my library, I delete it.

[Crippler]

A rating system is great for organizing your music and very useful in streaming content. For example, if the kids want to listening to some of their music, I can play the 2-Star rated music. (I'll rate all of the kids music with 2 stars.) This makes it SO easy to play all of their crazy children's music w/out searching through my entire music library. If I want to listen to music that brings Satan himself to his knees. I throw the 5 Stars on. I use a 1-star for Jen's music. Now there's a rating everyone can use.

With the new system, all the work users have put into using the ratings for a ton of useful things. Is gone. So hours of work totally FUBAR'd in one software update so some 'user group' can feel better connected to their music with their crazy media player from the future. Imagine the people who have spent hours organizing 20,000+ songs using the 5-Star system. Now all that work is gonna go down the toilet with this lame, utterly useless heart system. This wouldn't be a big deal if MS would have gave users the option of choosing which system they would like to employ.

[melon_master]

i like it - kind of, its good for people who either love a song like a child of thier own or want to hunt it down - but then again, why would u have songs on ure mp3 that u want to hunt down?