It happens...A track comes up on your player and you immediately want to skip it. How to prevent such a thing from happening? Music should be something to enjoy, not exercise for your arms and fingers and eyes in scrolling to the next track.

My Cowon players have the unfortunate drawback of being unable to rate music on the go, like an iPod can, so I have to resort to good old pen and paper. I write down the number of tracks on a disc and listen straight through (I do this at work mostly, so I only use track numbers). After I do a number of albums, I remove unwanted tracks and fill in my new free space with more albums.

I ended up using two rating systems: 1-5 stars and Pass/Fail. Each depends on what album I'm listening to.

I use Pass/Fail when I am listening to a soundtrack that is very uniform in style or I am listening to something I'm probably going to rate fully later. More or less, I'm trying to get the bad or boring tracks out of the way, so I can concentrate on the passing tracks in future listens and removing the 'Fail' tracks on the first listen frees up much needed space.

I've always struggled to use the 1-5 stars rating, because I would 5-star EVERYTHING I liked. Actually sitting down and trying to use all the stars is more rewarding. Here's my "key" I've been going by recently:

5 - Classic track I don't get tired of.

4.5 - Probably a classic track if given enough time to sink in. I prefer giving newer tracks 4.5 stars because it encourages me to listen to them more often than the usually more "known" 5 star tracks. Alternatively, it can be a 5 star track that has overstayed its welcome.

4.2 - Basically a good track that should be listened to more, but I'm lacking the enthusiasm I would have of a 4.5 star track. Usually I do this for tracks where I like the music, but the production is lacking (where the music is good, but difficult to listen to).

4 - A good, solid piece. Nothing more, nothing less, more likely to move up than move down. Probably the rating I use the most. If I'm making a greatest hits compilation for an artist, I never include anything below 4 stars.

3.8 - So close, yet so far to being good.

3.5 - Here's my limit on tracks I keep. 3.5 stars means it's a standard album track that might bloom into a 4 star track at best. Usually it's something I feel bad about removing outright, so it's left on to see if I might like it when I'm in a different mood. Unfortunately, more often than not, I end up skipping these when I set my player to "Play All".

3.2 - So close yet so far from standing out among the other dreadfully average pieces.

3 - Standard album track, usually filler that isn't worth listening to more than once. It's like, "thank you, now I'm done with you. You're fired"

2 - I use 2 stars for novelty tracks. Sometimes I'll keep it if it's entertaining enough, so the 2 actually is more of a marker in that regard.

1 - Funny thing about using 1's...I usually just get disgusted with the track and scribble down an 'X' instead. Basically, the music is getting gutted next time I sync my players, zero question.

Wow! Now here's a topic I can really get behind.

Generally I've done/been doing the same thing but I've done it over time. I started with about 4 DL DVD full of mp3s a few years ago. I had full albums on these things and they were a combination of european heavy metal and VGM. But then it really struck me... why keep a whole album when I like only a few songs? My friends who liked this music aren't hitting me up for dubs - we've all moved on and we don't see one another anymore. So a year or two ago I cut the inital load in about half just axing tracks I purely had no interest in. That phase was actually pretty easy - basically anything I couldn't remember without hearing although I did relisten to some stuff.

Now I'm trying to make another cut (and it's much more difficult now) even though some of this stuff hasn't aged well - especially the european heavy metal - and I'm just trying to keep what I can listen to at the moment without reservation. Right now the list I'm fiddling with has about 1900 songs left on it. But really, it's ironic how I can take a band like Stratovarius and narrow it down to 10-15 songs when I started with 300 (p.s. most bonus tracks suck!)

As for rating them, I kind of rate in two ways. The first is the "viable" test. If I can still stomach a track - and not get the urge to change to another - or just flat out love it I automatically give it a five out of five - aka I "keep" the track.

The other way I rate is with a five star system via my iPod and iTunes. I use this more for albums I own and have on my HD. My levels are a bit different than yours:

Five Stars - excellent track, a keeper
Four Stars - good track
Three Stars - average track
Two Stars - slightly subpar
One Star - bad track or jingles that are better served in game. Would be ripe for being deleted if not trying to keep the album intact.

I posted a list of the VGM that's made the cut so far here: http://www.soundtrackcentral.com/forums … 470#p69470

I didn't post a list of the metal/other music that's made the cut as I didn't think anyone be interested.

I have the same problem with most Euro Power Metal that I do with AC/DC...so much stuff sounds alike! I tend to stick with a small handful of bands (Kiske-Helloween, Strato, Power Quest, some Edguy, some Rhapsody, Hammerfall's first album and yes, some Dragonforce) and it's rare for anything outside of these to really grab me nowadays. I had been a Running Wild fan for awhile, but I got about three tracks into Pile of Skulls and decided I had enough of them for awhile. Thrash has kind of been the same way...core number of bands, rare to see anyone new really break in and shake things up. In those situations, where the sound is so uniform throughout the genre, I should probably use pass/fail, then rate the ones that passed. Usually, I use pass/fail for stuff like arcade soundtracks with like 30-40 similar sounding tracks.

Funnily enough, I'm having the same problem with the Mozart and Haydn Symphonies right now, but the sound is fresh and pleasant so everything not labeled with the tempo markers Andante or Adagio (I don't have the attention span for these, I openly admit) is getting passing grades. Same for a lot of Baroque stuff...The Water Music/Music for the Royal Fireworks (Handel), Tablemusic (Telemann) and Brandenburg Suites (Bach) just sound like top notch RPG music to me. I would have explored them a lot earlier in life if I knew this stuff sounded this good.

On the other hand, the other day, I sat down to rate Led Zeppelin II and I was like, "How the hell am I supposed to rate THIS?"

1=Trash
2=Okay (most likely a one-hit wonder album)
3=Good
4=Great
5=The Best

On iTunes I tend to inflate by the ratings for non-five star stuff though.

I wouldn't even have it on my playlist if I didn't want to listen to it. I suppose it's a 'rating'.

Actually, I tend to skim the music before putting it on my iPod in the first place. If there's anything on there I don't like, I don't put it on my iPod.
That, and I only listen to VGM anyway, so in most cases I already know which tracks I like and which I don't, because I've played the game.

I still don't have an ipod/mp3 player, so when I'm out and about I carry around a crappy discman I got from goodwill that thinks it's 'open' when it gets the slightest jiggle, so skipping tracks is absolutely out of the question, because pushing the forward button resets everything. I would like to get an mp3 player and make playlists, but I think I would also like to keep full albums on there because it is like the whole creation of the musician. Albums are like people, they have good traits and bad, but sometimes the less exciting tracks make more of a build up to the really good stuff. Contrast. For that reason I am trying to get albums that are more consistent as a whole, so I don't have to go all readers digest on it.

As far as ratings go, I think I have 3: hot $#!*, nice, and 'please no.' Most albums there are 3 or four songs that I love, a few I might dislike and the rest are in the middle. Since I listen to music when I am working on something I don't mind lulls in the interest-factor because I am focused on something else.

By the way, good choice on Brandenburg concertos, they get my first rating!

I rate my music with my ears, and occasionally by adding batches of recently listened music to my Last.fm loved tracks.

check out the new UK powermetal band LOST IN THOUGHT
www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmsjMPgOiWQ

I have most all my music rated.  Honestly in these days of multi-gigabyte music collections I don't see how people manage their music without doing it.  When I first made the decision to do so going through and rating everything was a huge chore (this is one area where having a portable player that can sync ratings - iPod only as far as I know - is a big plus) but once that was done keeping new acquisitions rated is pretty simple.  On a five star scale here's how it works for me:

5 stars - Amazingly good; the best of the best.  I could listen to any of these tracks at pretty much any time regardless of mood and be impressed.
4 stars - Good.  These and the 5 stars are what I usually listen to whether browsing by genre, artist, etc. or pulling tracks up at random.
3 stars - Mediocre.  Not something I specifically want to hear but worth listening to as part of the album.
2 stars - Pretty weak.  No real desire to hear it again and even if listening to an album am likely to skip it.
1 star - Awful.  The only reason I don't delete it is because I might wonder later why tracks are missing.

When in doubt between 3 and 4 stars I give tracks a 4 since it's unlikely I'll hear them anytime soon again otherwise.

Aside from making it easy to find stuff I like at home, rating hugely simplifies syncing to portable devices.  I just automatically sync all the 4 and 5 star tracks, that way I don't have to navigate through stuff I don't like on the road and all my favorite tracks fit on a 32GB storage device (for now).  Any new, unrated acquisitions or complete albums that I intend to review I add to a separate playlist.

So yeah that's my system and it works pretty well for me.

Umm....what? How does that even make ANY sense?

1. People generally own way more music nowadays than they would have a couple of decades ago.  This makes sense, no?

2. When you have for example over 700 hours of music (as I do, and I know a lot of people have more) how do you keep the stuff you would likely want to hear at any given time on your space-limited portable player, or even regularly listen to stuff you like at home without constantly skipping tracks (especially in the VGM world of filler-infested multi-disc OSTs).  It sounds difficult to me but feel free to explain what's so completely nonsensical about thinking so.

I must be weird because I never skip tracks. I've never believed in filler tracks either. Maybe I just have bad taste and a high tolerance

Usually the only time I'll skip a track is if I have heard it too many times in a week (I listen every night for at least 6hrs+ at work). Cowon, and most portable players for that matter, use terrible generic random functions that usually end up playing the same tracks each time it's booted up.

I only have the tracks I consider "good" (and under 15 minutes) even ripped. Randomizing takes care of any need for selection onto the portable. I don't skip tracks on CDs outside a very select few where there's a really bad track or two at the end (in the case of VGM, one single album applies -- SOTN)
I don't understand why people buy CDs and only would ever listen to just a few tracks. Seems like a real waste.

Wow, you have better luck than I do. I can count on maybe two hands the amount of VGM albums I leave completely intact. Even on the best albums, there's usually something begging to be cut.

If all tracks on every CD were the highest quality, I would agree. I feel like this is rarely the case, both with VGM and any other kind of music. Since my own listening time is rather limited, I'd rather it be spent on the best and most inspired tracks and not the filler that surrounds them. More often than not, if I pull a lower rated song from a great album when doing random all, my first instinct is to flip to one of the best tracks on the album.

Case in point: Grandia I's second OST. Across two discs, there's about one entire CD filled with tracks I love and about one entire CD filled with tracks that can't end soon enough and both good and bad are mixed together. It just so happens the good outweighs the bad, so I have to work around the bad. I've had my personal greatest hits mix of this on my hard drive for so long, I sometimes forget how the CD's were split up.

@Zorbfish: Agreed on the lousy randomizing on the Cowon players. It's like they pick an album of the day for me and throughout the listening session, they keep revisiting it.

Heh, instead of relying on the player randomize (I also have a Cowon, an iAudio 7), I pre-randomize the tracks by adding a random three digit number to them and them playing in order. Combined with the random selection in the first place (through Winamp) I get a very nice, eclectic, listening experience.