Introduction to iRateTunes

iRateTunes is a Mac application that saves you precious seconds in rating your iTunes songs by providing an advanced keystroke-driven interface. It looks like this:

iRateTunes is also the following:

• A Mac OS X-only application
• Free software!
• In beta right now--meaning it is a work in progress

Features

• Perform the following actions with a keystroke:
  • play/pause
  • ff/rew
  • prev/next song
  • rate song 0-5 stars
  • rate last song played
  • increment song count
• Get percentage of songs rated
• Keep track of how many songs you are rating
• Nice-looking and simple Cocoa interface

Why use iRateTunes?

For most people, iRateTunes will be simply another iTunes front-end; there's very little you can do in iRateTunes that you can't do in iTunes itself. The deeper purpose behind iRateTunes is to make life easier for anyone who is going methodically through a large library and trying to rate all the songs therein. Typically, you'd set up a smart playlist containing only unrated songs, then play through them at random (probably using Party Shuffle to get songs from just this playlist), rating as you go. The smart playlist automatically updates, meaning you never hear a rated song after you rate it.

Anyway, you are probably doing this as you are working on something else, since it is a long and tedious process to rate thousands of songs. So, once per song, you have to switch to iTunes, find your mouse, and click on the little star next to the song. It would be much easier, especially if your work involves more typing than mousing, to simply hit a few keys and rate the song without ever having to navigate to iTunes. Well, that is what iRateTunes does--you simply tab to it, and press a key to rate the currently-playing song.

iRateTunes includes a lot of information in its display, however, meaning that you never have to go to iTunes except to change playlists. You can see track, album, artist, and play time information in the simple interface.

Lastly, iRateTunes also aims to give various rating and library statistics. Currently, it will scan your library and tell you how many songs of the total number you have rated, and show you the percentage.

I have found that using iRateTunes lets me rate songs more efficiently while working than iTunes does, and causes less of a distraction. So download it and give it a shot yourself if you are in this situation of trying to rate lots of songs--you might find it useful! And after all, it's free.