Over the past year, I have been passively rating my music library on iTunes (or my iPhone) as I listen to them. I have finally rated my entire library and it feels good, really, really good.

Why should you rate your music?

Maybe you’re the type of guy who downloads a terabyte of music and brags about how much music you have. But what good is it if it’s mostly SHIT? Quality over quantity.

You can easily sort out your bad music from the good, delete the bad ones and streamline your library.

You can make a playlist of only your best music (5-star!), shuffle it and enjoy everything you hear!

How to rate music and what meaning to give to the stars

In iTunes, you have the option of rating something from 1 to 5 stars.

Here’s how I go about it:

1 star: I’m going to delete it. Why would I ever listen to something that I think is that shitty?

2 stars: Marked for deletion.

3 stars: Normally I would delete this (and I probably will), but the ONLY reason I’m keeping it is because it has sentimental value.

4 stars: It’s really, really good, but it’s not the BEST.

5 stars: The cream of the crop. The BEST of that genre. It’s TIMELESS. Meaning you could play this track 5, 10, 20 years from now and you couldn’t tell if it was made yesterday.

How HIGH of a musical standard do you hold?

I looked at my brothers iTunes library one day and noticed it was full of either 5-star rated tracks or unrated tracks, with nothing in between. He told me he deletes music that he considers 4.9 out of 5 stars or lower.

I was astounded when he told me that and in disbelief immediately asked him, “You even delete something you think is 4 out of 5?!”

Armand replied with, “Yup. There is so much music out there that I have no reason to keep the songs that are not the absolute best.”

That made a lot of sense, but it was still a difficult thing to process and accept, let alone actually put into practice. I find it hard to get rid of 3-star rated songs, let alone 4, so that’s quite the standard Armand is holding onto. It makes sense though, especially for a DJ like himself. It’s definitely one of the assets that sets him apart in such an over-saturated field.

After thoughts…

It took me over a year to actually rate my music and I find myself NEVER listening to the 3-star rated crap. If a 3-star rated song goes on, I don’t even let it play for more than 20 seconds before changing it. So I’m ready to delete them, despite their sentimental value. It took me months to realize this and I never would have been aware of this trend if I hadn’t rated my library so thoroughly. I just don’t know if I have the balls to delete the 4-star tracks. Not yet anyway.

Can YOU get yourself to delete anything that’s not the best?

Can YOU adhere to Armand’s standards?

Not sure? Well, start rating your songs and start that cleansing process!

Update: There’s a part 2 to this article, made exactly 3 months later. It involves a new development where I essentially want to rate some songs as 6-stars, haha.