NVinNYC

As you may (or may not) know, iTunes has always supported rating songs on a 100 point scale (at least since version 3, where song ratings were introduced). However, until now, it has never supported displaying anything other than ratings of 0 through 5 stars (which it records as numeric values between 0 and 100 in increments of 20). Other ratings are rounded down to the nearest multiple of 20 for display.

With the 6.0.2 update, iTunes has added the ability to display ratings in increments of 10 instead of 20, in other words, a half-star. However it offers no interface for setting such ratings. This information sprung up on Mac OS X Hints a few days ago, but Andrew Escobar makes it even easier with a tutorial that has step-by-step instructions with pictures on How to Set Half-Star Ratings in iTunes. It’s a cinch to set up your own half-star system now.

One warning though, iTunes 6.0.2 has a bug when editing star ratings on Smart Playlists. I posted a comment at the end of the tutorial that explains partially what was happening. If you plan on editing your Smart Playlists based on rating be sure to read it first (and have a copy of iTunes 6.0.1 for backup). Since it’s documented in Apple Support I’m sure it will be fixed with the next iTunes iteration tough.

Update: I found some other scripts to change ratings for the currently playing song by half-star increments and then used the venerable Quicksilver to assign them to global hot-keys so now I can change ratings for the current song even when iTunes is running in the background. For you other QS/LB/Butler jockeys out there it’s the only way to go…