An iPod quirk: you haven’t played a song until you’ve played it all
I’m presently trying to listen to all of the music in my collection, which comprises 7,096 items which, iTunes tells me, would take 21 days, 9 hours, 45 minutes and 45 seconds to play the whole lot of. Typically, of course, you only listen to about 10 per cent of those (and also, a whole chunk of those are Harry Potter, for the kids to listen to at some stage).
But I thought I’d even it up by creating a smart playlist of songs which haven’t been played in the past 366 days. It’s quite a big number - 21GB, 5,161 items, about 16 days of listening (including the HPs). So I put a randomly-chosen 1GB subsection of that on the iPod and just play it. Next time you sync, those songs you’ve listened to will have a “Last Played” in the last year, so they’ll disappear from your smart list.
Right?
Some tracks, though, you discover you just can’t bear to listen to. (I find some of Eminem’s early stuff just too teeth-grinding). So naturally you hit the fast-forward button, and go on to the next song.
But what I’ve discovered is that if you skip past the end of a song like that, the iPod doesn’t think you’ve played it - and it doesn’t have a Play Count. Strikes me as a bit weird: what’s the sense in that? Why does it only record a song as having been “played” if you’ve reached the end of it?
- These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
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December 8th, 2005 at 12:09 am
If you did fast forward it to the end (by holding down the forward/next button), it would be classed as played. But if you skip to the next song, then it wouldn’t be because you haven’t listened to it all. Look at it from another perspective: I might not want to listen to Eminem right now, but I might want to tomorrow. How would the iPod know?
What you need to do - and it is a bit time consuming to start with - is rate your songs then create a smart playlist that picks only 4+ star songs not played in the last year, or whatever. I have one that merges my 5 star songs, my iTMS purchases and my 3+ star tracks not played in the last 10 weeks, so I get a good mix of all-time faves, new stuff and a selection of OK but less popular music.
If something starts playing that’s not as good as you thought when you rated it in iTunes, simply change its star rating on the iPod and this will be passed back to iTunes when you next update.
December 8th, 2005 at 12:50 am
I’d say that any algorithm that defines whether or not a song was played will be arbitrary. But the one the iPod uses is pretty simple. Want to mark a song as played without listening to it? Click the button to get the time marker and scrub to the end of the song. That’ll mark it as played and go on to the next song. Want to skip without marking it as played? Click on the Forward button instead.
December 8th, 2005 at 12:56 am
My brother has what amounts to musical epilepsy, and can’t listen to a whole song without skipping to the next one. He’s forever looking up something else he feels like listening to that picosecond; I was looking through his library, and it looked like he hadn’t listened to much at all; despite the fact he listens to some tune or another pretty much constantly!
December 8th, 2005 at 1:32 am
This is not just an iPod quirk. It’s really an iTunes quirk. The same requirement to complete a song before it’s considered played is evident in iTUnes on Mac OS X.
December 8th, 2005 at 1:59 am
If using iTunes on a Mac computer, a script can set the play count. I don’t use iTunes but these should at least provide a starting point for a more complete script.
– First line works on the track that’s selected.
tell application “iTunes” to set played count of selection to 1
– or, this should work on the track that’s playing.
tell application “iTunes” to set played count of current track to 1
December 8th, 2005 at 3:47 am
I wish it were an option in iTunes/iPod to count
the track as played if you listen to it for N
seconds where N is 5 or 10 or something similar.
December 8th, 2005 at 4:14 am
I don’t know if iTunes uses it anymore, but I think originally it was using playcount as an indication of whether the user liked a song. If you skip out of a song, that should not indicate that you like a song, so iTunes doesn’t increment the playcount. From this premise, the feature of not incrementing the playcount when you don’t play it completely, is correct. The feature predated and did not anticipate smart playlists or someone trying to listen to all their songs with them.
December 8th, 2005 at 4:38 am
Found this blog somehow and have to agree with you. This ‘feature’ of iTunes/iPod drives me crazy! I’ve tried to think of different ways around it and so far the best I’ve come up with is an internal time counter for each music file. So, you play 3mins of a 4 min song twice you’d get 6mins/4min = 1.5 playcounts. That then rounds up to 2 for the display. Of course it wouldn’t be perfect but it would be much better.
December 8th, 2005 at 11:17 am
Maybe delete the early Eminem?
December 8th, 2005 at 3:18 pm
I suggest a slight variation on Chris’ suggestion - set up your smart playlist to exclude one star songs. Then, when you come across a song you don’t like, rate it weith one star before flicking to the next track. You won’t hear it again, and you don’t need to sit around for hourts rarting all your music up front.
(If you haven’t rated your music yet, it’s easy enough you set all unrated stuff to, say, three stars as a default. That’s what I do.)
December 8th, 2005 at 11:48 pm
The scripting idea would almost be a good one - except I usually have no idea what the songs are. I can like some Eminem, dislike others. Deleting stuff, well, yeah, though rating would be a better way - just have one-star tracks, and not load those.
As for rating the music - isn’t that something you can do on the machine? Except I’ve never managed to find how you’d do that.
December 9th, 2005 at 9:39 am
>Isn’t that something you can do on the machine? Except I’ve never managed to find how you’d do that
By machine do you mean the iPod itself?
Obviously, the easiest way to rate tracks is in iTunes itself. Just make sure the rating column is visible of course (sorry if you know all this, but thought I’d cover it all).
Secondly, you can do this remotely if you’re listening to music from you mac but streamed to a hifi. If you use the Salling Clicker Remote Control application on a bluetooth phone, you can rate the track that is currently playing on the phone.
Finally (and possibly what you’re looking for) you can rate tracks on at least some iPod models (tested in 5G and nano). When a track is playing click the centre button twice relatively quickly (first click takes you to “scrub” mode I think it’s called). The second click will show up a rating screen. You can then rotate the clickwheel to award it whatever stars you want!
Then back in iTunes don’t forget to use smartplaylists to select your higher ranked tracks.
Hope that does it one way or another.
Ian
December 9th, 2005 at 12:07 pm
Yes, by “machine” I do mean on the iPod - I hardly ever listen to music via iTunes (all my music is on an external HD, and it’s a bore to plug in). Plus I listen to music while on the move, mostly, so that’s where I want to rate songs.
Thanks for the tip. I thought it must either be something to do with the centre button or the menu button, but couldn’t recall anything in the menu. That’s great.
December 9th, 2005 at 3:23 pm
That is cool, I didn’t know you could rate on the iPod. Now, if we can just figure out a way to rate music on the iPod Shuffle, I’ll be all set :)
December 9th, 2005 at 4:09 pm
>I didn’t know you could rate on the iPod.
I didn’t either until recently. However, I should just double-clarify, I’ve only done this on a nano and on a 5G iPod (video). So I don’t know for sure if it works on all iPods (except Shuffle). So don’t shoot the messenger if it doesn’t work on your particular model!
December 10th, 2005 at 12:47 am
You can definitely rate tracks on a 3G iPod.
December 10th, 2005 at 7:22 am
Yawn.
December 26th, 2005 at 12:44 pm
Not all but some songs I put on my Ipod (60Gb) don’t play all the way through b4 moving on to the next song. Only certain songs, but always the same songs.
Anyone else have this problem, or know how to fix it?
I don’t use iTunes, instead I use the much better Anapod software.
I’d appreciate any help.
Ken
December 28th, 2005 at 11:46 am
OK, I’ve solved the problem myself, and for those of you who experience the same problem here’s how to do it……
Convert the file to OGG format using any standard audio converter. Then when transferring to the ipod using ANAPOD audiomorph the file back to MP3 format.
Song then plays complete to end!
Ken
January 8th, 2006 at 11:05 pm
I don’t use ANAPOD but still have the same problem with some of the songs i download. Any suggestions as to how i sort them out? Or how the hell i contact apple or somebody to get my money back and repurchase!!!!