Support ratings

[msbendts]

With the release of v2.5 showing that deeper integration into the music services is completely doable, I'd like to suggest the following: enable the ability to rate the Song, Album, & Artist via the handheld controller.

As I'm listening to music, I'd like to be able to rate how much I like the song, the album, and the artist. For my own personal library, it really helps when creating random play lists (all 5-start albums). But the real advantage comes from the music service (Rhaposdy & Napster...I'm not sure if Sirus does this) as they use this rating to help tune the music delievered. Imagine the music on the Channel adjusting to how you react to the song. The songs/albums/artists presented on the Rhapsody/Naptser Recommends listing would be better tuned to your music desires.

The best usage of this that I have seen so far is from Yahoo! Music (music.yahoo.com). I've been using Rhapsody with my Sonos and my Sansa MP3 player...and via my MP3 player I can rate the songs which makes Rhapsody adjust what is delivered to me. I'd like the same ability from the Sonos handheld controller.

I love listening to the Channels as it provides me a way to explore new music. I know I can add a song that I like from a Channel to My Favorites, but it would be really handy to rate the song/album/artist. That way I could quickly use that rating to find more music from that ablum/artist to also explore.

Thanks!

Mike

[sleijer]

I would very much like to see 5-star rating in the SONOS software. Rating would also allow another cool feature to be implemented into the software - automatic playlists. For example, a playlist which includes all the songs rated 3 stars or better etc... If one could also include rules concerning the genre one would have a hell of a system!

[dhor]

I agree - this would be a great feature, I use an intelligent playlist within iTunes based on the ratings I assign to songs - it would be excellent to be able to assign ratings from the controller

[PaulS]

Originally Posted by buzz

That's a tough one because a fundamental guiding principle is never write on the user's file system.

While that is very safe and sensible (especially from the POV of Sonos's Legal Advisors!) IMO the absence of
editing facilities imposes unnecessary inconvenience on the Sonos user and limits the potential of the Sonos
system.

a) User Inconvenience...

Say I'm sitting at the Desktop Controller and notice that a track title is mis-spelled or I want to rename/combine
an artist who appears in several different guises or, as several others have asked, add a "Star Rating", or...

At the moment I must...

1) Fire up a separate Tag Editor - I use EAC for ripping and Media Monkey for tagging but because my PC doesn't
have enough space to hold all the music that's on my NAS, my "global" MediaMonkey DB will probably be out-of-date.

2) MediaMonkey: File, Add/Rescan my NAS library to bring my global DB up-to-date.

3) Wait for several m..i..n..u..t..e..s **

4) Locate the item in my Tag Editor (Not always as straight-forward as this might sound!)

5) Correct the mis-spelling / Star Rating / whatever

6) Back to the Desktop Controller: Music, UpdateMusicIndex...

7) And Wait... for another several m..i..n..u..t..e..s

If it's still not quite right, I might be able to avoid steps 1+2+3 before my next batch of edits, but I must still
wait for the UpdateMusicIndex scan to complete each and every time. Operations which only take a few seconds for a
reasonable number of tracks on a PC's local disk can take orders of magnitude longer for thousands of tracks stored
out on a LAN.

But take a step back: I don't actually /want/ to keep this track+artist information in any /separate/ database. In
general, I only want to enjoy the music on my NAS through the "reassuringly-expensive" Sonos system that I bought.

Now, if the Desktop Controller*** (with all appropriate "Don't blame me if I destroy your music" warnings) could do
the editing directly (on both the tracks AND the internal Sonos DB), it should be able to avoid steps
1+2+3+4+6+7**** and so be much more convenient and save this Sonos User precious leisure time.

The larger the music collection, the more likely that customers will seek out a Sonos solution but the more likely
that they will want to correct something and/or reclassify their collection.


b) Limiting Sonos potential...

At the moment, the Sonos system is restricted to only those tags supported by third-party tagging programs. No
matter how much we users may want a feature, nor how much Sonos would like to provide it, if it requires a new type of tag then it simply can't happen until/unless some third-party decides to implement it - and implement it to suit Sonos's precise requirements, regardless of how unimportant it may be to their own program.

Sonos, Be Brave! Don't hold yourselves back! After all, "Embrace and Extend" is a proven route to World Dominance!


** Yes, there are ways I can marginally speed up this process but each requires more user effort and hence inconvenience.

*** Or a separate Sonos tag-editing application

**** Because it should know exactly which artists/albums/tracks have been modified, so it should not need to perform a /full/ music scan.

[DigitalBoy]

why are you using EAC and MediaMonkey. Why not just use one? That would eliminate many of your steps, time etc.

Originally Posted by PaulS

4) Locate the item in my Tag Editor (Not always as straight-forward as this might sound!)

5) Correct the mis-spelling / Star Rating / whatever

6) Back to the Desktop Controller: Music, UpdateMusicIndex...

7) And Wait... for another several m..i..n..u..t..e..s

Even if you could use the Sonos Desktop controller (SDC) to do this, here is the scenario
4) still need to locate the items in SDC
5) still need to correct misspellings etc
6) still need to update index. I understand what you're saying, a smarter reindex. But there are issues. The files that you would be editing in SDC do not reside on the ZPs, they are just files on your PC/NAS. The Sonos index however is *not* on your PC, it's within all the ZPs. So when you do a reindex, it's not your desktop doing any work, it's the ZPs that are rescanning. I accept that it's possible for the ZPs to somehow add one file at a time if directly told which files to add. But the ZP is not aware of SDC edits, and the SDC is not aware of the ZP index (I know the SDC reads the index real time but it does not maintain the index). I'm just trying to explain that it's not as easy as it first appears.

So I would say that the only saving might be with the reindex.

However I *do* agree that Sonos should be able to write data (maybe in a sidecar file) so that it can record things like last played, most played, etc. The tags however must use standard tags, not proprietary Sonos info.

Originally Posted by PaulS

At the moment, the Sonos system is restricted to only those tags supported by third-party tagging programs. No
matter how much we users may want a feature, nor how much Sonos would like to provide it, if it requires a new type of tag then it simply can't happen until/unless some third-party decides to implement it - and implement it to suit Sonos's precise requirements, regardless of how unimportant it may be to their own program

Not correct, Sonos supports the 'standard' tags. This is not limited to third party apps support. So Sonos can only support those tags that are supported by the tags (I know that is a circular reference). These are usually published by some non-profit for open source, or Company for proprietary. But if they're proprietary, Sonos can't change the codec. More importantly, I use my digital music on Sonos, in my car, portable etc etc. Sonos *must* obide by standard tags and not use non-std tags for that reason.

Most of the features you are referring to are not tags (artist, album etc). I like the Sonos sidecar file approach. Sonos can do it's weird and wonderful thing, and have all these settings, personalization, workflow improvements etc that you're asking for in these files and my digital music files are preserved *and* useable on other equipment. These sidecar files are also easily backed up because they are so small. Other options are to use ini files (or xml) or write the Sonos database to disk (like a sqlite db) that can also be backed up, edited etc. The point is, this data *cannot* go into the source files for many reasons. Even apps like MediaMonkey, iTunes, WMP etc use this approach. The std tags are written into the files, the 'other' data is in their database.

I'm not opposed to Sonos writing proprietary data (I actually support it), but keep away from my tags - I'm not an exclusive Sonos user and do not want to be locked into Sonos for life. What if something better comes along...

db

[googull]

I suspect we all have uniquely convoluted mechanisms for managing our music and the mechanisms to rate music. I agree being able to adjust ratings from the controller would be highly valued even if they results weren't reflected back into iTunes. IMO, That's an iTunes problem.

Ratings get most COMPLEX when they are used to create playlists. To simplify I'd propose a simple ratings filter applied to the Queue rather than to playlists. In the same way we toggle repeat, shuffle, on the queue I envision a simple option to apply ratings to the queue in a similar manner. ALL the tracks residing in the queue would be filtered out of the play mix when they come up based on the filter active at the time. So no matter what means we use to get material into the queue, this filter lets us dynamically thin up/down the items that actually play.

Ideally such a filter would supports the usual, play 1 star or greater, etc. but also the ability to conjunctively play the unrated songs as well.

[PaulS]

Originally Posted by DigitalBoy

why are you using EAC and MediaMonkey. Why not just use one?

Because I have found that EAC gives me the best quality rips and, perhaps more importantly, always reports any problems, rather than silently ignoring errors. (Maybe MM does too, but I came to it after EAC)

For speed, I rip to (and set the initial tags on) my local PC drive using a "local" MM database. Then, I copy the finished FLAC to the NAS and reindex the Sonos. Because my PC drive isn't large enough to mirror the NAS, the odds are that any file I want to amend is no longer on my PC, and since I don't always take the time to rebuild my MM global database whenever I copy new files, that's the reason I need to rescan the NAS before I can start editing.

Note my gripe is not with MM - it's the hassle (to me) of being forced to go outside the Sonos system.
Not to mention the danger (to Sonos) of constantly "encouraging" users to look at alternative audio software.

Originally Posted by DigitalBoy

Even if you could use the Sonos Desktop controller (SDC) to do this...
4) still need to locate the items in SDC

Err, my original post did start... "Say I'm sitting at the Desktop Controller and notice that a track title is mis-spelled.."

Originally Posted by DigitalBoy

5) still need to correct misspellings etc

Now if only Sonos could handle this one!

Originally Posted by DigitalBoy

6) still need to update index. I understand what you're saying, a smarter reindex....

Yes, and my point was that the SDC does already know everything to make a smarter reindex possible. The SDC+PC already has access to both NAS files and Sonos index (ok, RO and maybe not directly); already communicates with Sonos boxes to tell it/them to reindex; and should be able to remember which files it has edited!

Even if the re-index isn't handled by the PC, in theory there's no great difference between the commands: "Reindex - but I refuse to tell you what might have changed" and "Reindex - and these are the only ones that I have changed". Indeed, a human would probably find the second task easier. Admittedly the shuffling might be a little trickier for the Sonos, but nothing near as tricky as tasks the boxes are already doing.

Anyway, the (lack of) speed of the UpdateMusicIndex is a minor irritation compared to the "I'll let you see all these spelling mistakes but I won't let you correct them - you must fire up another application"

(Not to mention the "...and I won't let you play them through your PC either - you must fire up another application" )

Originally Posted by DigitalBoy

I'm not opposed to Sonos writing proprietary data (I actually support it), but keep away from my tags

I didn't mean inventing new proprietary tags for storing current information under different headings. But at the moment /all/ information in my Sonos DB does come exclusively from tags in the .FLAC or .MP3 (except for folder.jpg). And most players should silently ignore any tags that they don't understand?

But I care less about /where/ any extra information might be stored than that a new killer feature might be delayed or not even attempted - "oh, we'd love to do that, but there isn't any /standard/ tag to hold that information"

But that's enough kite-flying for today!

[Rubybish]

Id like to see the ratings displayed.
I have reservations about the controller being able to update the ratings. As much as I'd like that functionality, I wouldnt want to have my music share as writable.

[mrvwman]

Originally Posted by msbendts

With the release of v2.5 showing that deeper integration into the music services is completely doable, I'd like to suggest the following: enable the ability to rate the Song, Album, & Artist via the handheld controller.

As I'm listening to music, I'd like to be able to rate how much I like the song, the album, and the artist.

<snip>

Mike

The feature that Mike suggests is exactly what I want also. It's actually already implemented as part of Pandora's music service, I can use the controller to say that I like or don't like the particular song. The same UI could be used to rate a Rhapsody song (or other song) 1-5 stars.

My 2 cent suggestion that would make me an even happier Sonos customer.

Cheers,
~>Bill

[mark_anderson_us]

These are the two (best) features of iTunes and the iPod that keep me those platforms.

The ability to rate a song (from ITunes) or from the iPod is phenomenal. When coupled with SmartPlaylist that live-update it's unbeatable. I have one playlist that I NEVER have to touch called Favorites. EVERY song that I rate as 5 stars gets added automatically.

Would love to see support for these on Sonos playlists.