“In iTunes, you can rate songs and albums separately,” Kirk McElhearn writes for Kirkville. “For example, you can rate a song five stars, and an album four stars.”
“If you do this, iTunes considers that every track that is not rated specifically inherits the album rating,” McElhearn writes. “And the album rating – if you have not set it expressly – is computed from any song ratings you’ve applied. This can be good or bad, depending on how you manage your iTunes library.”
“When iTunes 12.2 was released, the app changed some song ratings to album ratings. This means that if you have smart playlists that look for, say, five-star songs, iTunes will add all the tracks from the album with the five-star rating to those playlists,” McElhearn writes. “After iTunes 12.2 was released, this happened occasionally; but with iTunes 12.4, my entire library was changed.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Annoying. The bloated iTunes beast strike again!
Thankfully, we have Time Machine (and other) backups.
Ratings are overrated.
My comment is slyly referring to the ratings on this website (the stars for voting on comments, nothing mulch to do w Tim Cook) but your revenge theory is new and intriguing. It would explain a lot.
Lol, slightly paranoid are we 🙂
This happens with iTunes 10 and 11 too, typically in recently added albums in which some of the tracks are rated, when iTunes is restarted.
Apple Music killed my collections and removed some songs. I killed my subscription to Apple Music. However, problems leftover from that fiasco have not been fixed. For example, I tell iTunes to sync only checked songs. It doesn’t respect that setting. I get every damn song I don’t want. Now with this, I’m beyond fed up. Apple’s software gets worse and worse with every release.
Too many exMicroSloth hires left to their own devices.
…it doesn’t destroy the smart playlists, just puts the wrong tracks in them, until you remove the album ratings by setting them to 0 stars. The album ratings are then computed correctly and show as light colour stars instead of medium grey.
I avoid iTunes like the plague for many years now, unless I want to buy some tunes, backup a device or download some podcasts. I NEVER trusted iTunes syncing and lived to tell the tale far better than many that did. I prefer syncing and backup services and apps that truly spell out everything and not leave you living in a fool’s paradise thinking nothing bad could ever happen.
I am still using iTunes 10.7 which is fantastic, has CoverFlow and is the best music playing software ever. Before Steve Jobs passed on, and Apple pulverized iTunes. In fact I have left my iMac and iPhone exactly as it was while Steve was still on earth and it all works perfectly. I dread the day I am forced to upgrade. I will have to buy a new iMac and iPhone and they will be so much worse than what I have now.
If only I’d been that smart 🙁
Because of iTunes Bloat, have never subscribed to Apple Music.
Guilt by association.
Maybe unfair, but it’s all part of their system.
Itunes got to go…. Too much mess!
Hope this is already happening behind the closed doors..
Album ratings have always been problematic. I have been experimenting by using the Love feature at the album level and the 5 stars at the song level. It is a drag that Love is binary instead of graduated, but it’ll do for my needs.
One of my beefs is that you cannot use the completeness of an album in a smart playlist. I know that iTunes knows about completeness of albums, since it is capable of offering to completing albums for me. If only I could use it to exclude incomplete albums from a smart playlist of favourite albums.
Way to go Johnny Boy, some thinks just don’t need your special touch!
(0_o) What is wrong with you Apple? FIX iTunes! Don’t screw around with our tune databases then expect us to appreciate it! Sometimes… SOMETIMES!… ✊💥🍎
Old news… Haven’t seen it in a while, but just go to Albums view and set Album Rating for any affected album to zero stars. No smart playlists are not “destroyed.”
I haven’t had that column selected to view in any iTunes iteration. I’ve hated and avoided it forever, therefore, never knew nor cared if it were there or not.
slop.