Slashdot Mirror
Crunching the Math On iTunes
markmcb writes "OmniNerd has posted an interesting article about the statistical math behind iTunes. The author makes some interesting observations concerning the same song playing twice in a row during party shuffle play, the impact that star ratings have on playback, and comparisons with plain old random play (star ratings not considered)." From the article: "To test the option's preference for 5-stars, I created a short playlist of six songs: one from each different star rating and a song left un-rated. The songs were from the same genre and artist and were changed to be only one second in duration. After resetting the play count to zero, I hit play and left my desk for the weekend. To satisfy a little more curiosity, I ran the same songs once more on a different weekend without selecting the option to play higher rated songs more often. Monday morning the play counts were as shown in Table 1."
As a record store owner, My business faces ruin. CD sales have dropped through the floor. People aren't buying half as many CDs as they did just a year ago. Revenue is down and costs are up. My store has survived for years, but I now face the prospect of bankruptcy. Every day I ask myself why this is happening.
I bought the store about 12 years ago. It was one of those boutique record stores that sell obscure, independent releases that no-one listens to, not even the people that buy them. I decided that to grow the business I'd need to aim for a different demographic, the family market. My store specialised in family music - stuff that the whole family could listen to. I don't sell sick stuff like Marilyn Manson or cop-killer rap, and I'm proud to have one of the most extensive Christian rock sections that I know of.
The business strategy worked. People flocked to my store, knowing that they (and their children) could safely purchase records without profanity or violent lyrics. Over the years I expanded the business and took on more clean-cut and friendly employees. It took hard work and long hours but I had achieved my dream - owning a profitable business that I had built with my own hands, from the ground up. But now, this dream is turning into a nightmare.
Every day, fewer and fewer customers enter my store to buy fewer and fewer CDs. Why is no one buying CDs? Are people not interested in music? Do people prefer to watch TV, see films, read books? I don't know. But there is one, inescapable truth - Internet piracy is mostly to blame. The statistics speak for themselves - one in three discs world wide is a pirate. On The Internet, you can find and download hundreds of dollars worth of music in just minutes. It has the potential to destroy the music industry, from artists, to record companies to stores like my own. Before you point to the supposed "economic downturn", I'll note that the book store just across from my store is doing great business. Unlike CDs, it's harder to copy books over The Internet.
A week ago, an unpleasant experience with pirates gave me an idea. In my store, I overheard a teenage patron talking to his friend.
"Dude, I'm going to put this CD on the Internet right away."
"Yeah, dude, that's really lete [sic], you'll get lots of respect."
I was fuming. So they were out to destroy the record industry from right under my nose? Fat chance. When they came to the counter to make their purchase, I grabbed the little shit by his shirt. "So...you're going to copy this to your friends over The Internet, punk?" I asked him in my best Clint Eastwood/Dirty Harry voice.
"Uh y-yeh." He mumbled, shocked.
"That's it. What's your name? You're blacklisted. Now take yourself and your little bitch friend out of my store - and don't come back." I barked. Cravenly, they complied and scampered off.
So that's my idea - a national blacklist of pirates. If somebody cannot obey the basic rules of society, then they should be excluded from society. If pirates want to steal from the music industry, then the music industry should exclude them. It's that simple. One strike, and you're out - no reputable record store will allow you to buy another CD. If the pirates can't buy the CDS to begin with, then they won't be able to copy them over The Internet, will they? It's no different to doctors blacklisting drug dealers from buying prescription medicine.
I have just written a letter to the RIAA outlining my proposal. Suing pirates one by one isn't going far enough. Not to mention pirates use the fact that they're being sued to unfairly portray themselves as victims. A national register of pirates would make the problem far easier to deal with. People would be encouraged to give the names of suspected pirates to a hotline, similar to TIPS. Once we know the size of the problem, the police and other law enforcement agencies will be forced to take piracy seriously. They have fought the War on Drugs with skill, so why not the War on Piracy?
This evening, m
So from this we learn that the random play on iTunes really is random, and that rating a song really does have an effect. Who'd a thunk?
Next, "iTunes really does play tunes!"
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
I'm looking at this data and it seems that iTunes does seem to pick out favorite songs more often than not-so-favorite songs. Which, I suppose, is the whole idea behind the Party Shuffle concept.
So after analyzing all that data, how does Brian Hansen come to the conclusion that "it's simply the mind's tendency to find a pattern that makes you think iTunes has a preference". Uh, no. It's the software learning that you have a certain type of genre or style that you strongly favor and will selectively pick songs that are related, thus giving you a better-selected playlist.
And it seems that the program has a bug in that it will play a song twice in a row. That's a real bug (if you don't like that type of thing).
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
the time my 2G iPod seemed to have a liking for the Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Vol. 2. It was playing a track off it pretty much every other song. Those of you who know the album can appreciate that it's not the kind of music that you'd maybe choose as everyday listening material.
It became so annoying that I ended up removing the album from iTunes, at which point my iPod promptly died. The replacement was big on Roxy Music IIRC...
I wish iTunes would get ratings from some online source much like it gets tracknames from Gracenote. Can you imagine a server of user-submitted ratings? You could opt to use an average rating from all users, or a rating from users with particular tasks (i.e., if you are a metaller, then you'll probably not want raver's musical opinions affecting your ratings!).
Why? Because I haven't got the time to go around rating my entire music library. Judging from that article, it is dangerous to only do a few because of the weighting algorithm used - surely it would be more sensible to assume that 'not rated' meant 3 stars rather than 0 stars? That way you could rate down shitty songs, and rate up excellent songs, but ignore rating the vast majority of songs.
I can't tell you how many Christian record stores I'm permanently banned from.
Someone to show how cool mathematics is
There are a lot of other programs, if you don't like iTunes...
That's exactly why I love last.fm (formerly Audioscrobbler & Last.fm). It automatically tracks what you listen to and then allows that information to be used to give you neighbors in the music world based on what interests you have in common. You can add friends, join groups, and even tag your music. All of this is extremely useful in finding new stuff. They've got plugins for all the major media players (and even some minor ones).
;)
Add on top of that the ability to play a custom-built radio station, set it to play only new music or listen only to music from a particular user profile.
Linux and BSD supported! Open source plugins and radio station player! Could it get better?
---
but make sure that the last line
Generated by SlashdotRndSig via GreaseMonkey
I immediately thought the same thing. This has to be the only place where we pick up on things like that.
That looks pretty neat, I'll have to look into it some more.
From their results, I'd venture a guess as to the underlying algorithm:
Each song is given a number of points equal to (rating + 1). Then the probability of the song being played is (song rating)/(total points).
Or, to put more succinctly:
prob(song) = (rating)/(n + sum(i=1..n)(rating(i)))That yields probabilities in the given test case of:
5 star - .285 .238 .190 .143 .095 .048
4 star -
3 star -
2 star -
1 star -
0 star -
Which is reasonably close to what the author found. Heck, if I were implementing that feature, it's what I'd try first...
I have a certain CD that causes my Audi S4 (when set to random mode) to play the same track over and over and over. Guess somebody didn't prove their recurrence actually worked.
:)
At least iTunes doesn't seem to have that particular problem.
You'd think, with iTunes, that people would be buying music they like (a four or five rating) in a much higher proportion than music they'd rate as a three.
Then there's music added from your own collection. Maybe its just me, but my preferences tend to be stronger than -, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
I usually go through my music collection on a regular basis and delete crap that I don't listen to, which is usually anything less than a three, and definitely a - or a one.
And is 4334 just a random arbitrary # of songs to use?
(when you add up X0 through X5)
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
A way to calculate the odds that 2% will be played in the next 50 songs doesn't work 50* (2/100) = 100% as the author does, and neither 25*(2*100) = 50% is correct.
The correct calculations are: 1-(98/100)^50 = 63% and 1-(98/100)^25 = 39%.
This way you calculate the odds a song will be played at least once in the next 50 or 25 songs.
If you want to calculate the odds the song will be played exactly once in the next 50 or 25 songs:
50 * (2/100) * ((98/100)^49) = 37% or 25 * (2/100) * ((98/100)^24) = 31%.
I guess that's all..
For those too lazy to go read for themselves...
"Many claim to still see patterns as iTunes rambles through their music collection, but the majority of these patterns are simply multiple songs from the same artist. Think of it this way: If you have 2000 songs and 40 of them are from the same artist, there is always a 2% chance of hearing them next with random play. So right after one of their songs finishes, odds almost guarantee they will be played again within the next 50 songs and show a 50% chance they will play again within the next 25 songs. It's simply the mind's tendency to find a pattern that makes you think iTunes has a preference."
I was gonna go with an n/t here, but you have some other points that I can address as well.
Some of us aren't music nazis. I am; I keep all of my music in a custom database, with a custom structure designed for tagging which I'm currently working on trying to design a way to serialize to ID3 without success. That being said, for the average person, they just keep whatever music in their iTunes, and if they care enough about the song, they rate it.
Personally, I use 1-5 ratings, and leave no stars to mean "unrated", but I might be a little different from the typical user. But then again, I also don't use iTunes for anything other than putting music on my iPod and grabbing podcasts occasionally.
Lastly, I never delete old music because there's always a chance you get a tune stuck in your head and remember that good old song, and you just want to hear it One More Time *daft punk*.
And yes, 4334 is an arbitrary number. But it's a good representation of the number of MP3s someone would have with access to some file sharing, cds, and a few online purchases. I'd give this article a thumbs up on accuracy.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
In fact, I find that I tend to rate only the songs I *really* like and *really* dislike, and leave the average songs alone. I suspect that I am not alone here. It's akin to the trend of many online forums to attract polarized opinions; i.e., few people take the time to log into forums and post comments that are middle-of-the-road -- typically they're full of "THIS SUCKS" or "HELL YEAH" posts.
"I haven't got the time to go around rating my entire music library"
Much less pay for it, I assume. I'm a certifiable geezer by slashdot standards (>40), but I do know a thing or two about music. I was a really hardcore music collector in college, and one core credo was to know everything in your collection inside-out. Practically speaking, it meant that any new addition to the library (vinyl or cassette, if you've heard of either) stayed in a "just-in" quarantine section until I had listened to it enough times to consider it "known".
It is really sad that people amass immense music collections and really don't have any familiarity with the music they have. Well, maybe it isn't actually sad, but I have to wonder what the point is.
Coralized url.
Just in case, as the web in question seems to be keeping well with slashdot effect.
--
Dreamhost superb hosting.
Kunowalls!!! Random sexy wallpapers (NSFW!).
Hosting 20G hd, 1Tb bw! ssh $7.95
For anyone looking on an interesting read about stats (that is actually accurate) check out the Birthday Paradox.
The whole "good chance that the same artist will come up in the next 50 songs" is actually the same type of math as the Birthday Paradox. (larger set)
When in doubt, parenthesize. At the very least it will let some poor schmuck bounce on the % key in vi. (Larry Wall)
If you genuinely think that's a troll, you have no sense of humour. A troll is intended to wind people up, not make them laugh. Kinda like your post...oh shit. Did I just get troll'd?!?!?
Most people follow a bell shaped curve for their ratings, with the 3-star rating being the most common.
I mean, where is this statistic coming from?
In my case the majority of rated songs are 5's, almost the same number of 4's, then some 3's, and hardly any 2's or 1's.. with perhaps 50% left unrated. I use iTunes at least several hours a day. Those of my friends who use iTunes seem to have a similar distribution.
mogorific carpentry experiments
If you deselect the track in iTunes, it should never play it unless you double-click on it.
It has been my observation that the HDD based HFS+ formatted iPod's I've owned, which I spend more time with than iTunes, seem to employ a Brownian Motion to their random/shuffle play.
:-)
Few digital devices have a true white random number generator.
The best they can generally achieve is a sequence that when observed for a certain period of time will average out to being white.
In my case I generally only ever listen to the first 150 steps along the "random" sequence that the iPod constructs for me each morning when I get to the office. I submit that this observation period is too short to average out to white.
Further, I submit that the sequence generated is very Brownian in the way it selects the next tune to play. My theory is that Apple does this to boost battery life as picking closer neighbors in the sequence reduces energy consumption and heat build up in the iPod's HDD.
I've also submit that the sequence is based in part on the structure of the HFS+ file system. If I add more music to my iPod I've noticed the tunes being selected for the first 150 slots gets re-shuffled. A handy feature for the iTMS.
A friend of mine who worked at a radio station that played a very diverse range of music told me how they select music.
She said that research had shown that listeners would rate the same song higher if it followed other song of a similar genre. If they play songs of different genres randomly the listener does not enjoy the music as much.
So their tendency is to play "blocks" of music.
For example....
4 Classic Rock songs
3 Blues Songs
3 Folk songs
4 Female Rockers
3 Grunge
etc.
This is common knowledge in the radio world. I wonder if Apple has incorporated this type of logic into it's iTunes algorithms?
The radio station in question is WXPN and can be found under iTunes > Radio > Public > WXPN
Maybe we are thinking about the rating system the wrong way. I have to admit that until I read this article and several posts I thought the same way. Normally, I would rate my favoriate songs with a 5, average songs with a 3 and songs I don't like with a 1. And like several posters left most of my songs with no rating.
However, if you change the way you rate songs, the rating system would work better. Get away from the 3 is average thinking and start thinking no stars is average. Then you rate up from there. 1 star is a little better until 5 starts is a song you would want to listen to over and over and over and over again.
Would this not make more sinces when rating your songs on a scale such as this?
Art by Mindy Herman, my wife.
Everything changes, even how we make a living. I myself paint cars. If someone tomorrow came up with a cheap method for producing car parts that never need to be painted, I would be out of a job while the entire world heralded the new technology as a breakthrough.
We all want to think that once we have our lives in order, they're going to stay that way. Nothing is guaranteed, not even whether yesterdays market will be here tomorrow.
It's no one's fault but your own if you're selling something no one wants to buy.
- When you do things right, no one will be sure you've done anything at all.
Either this guy has a MUCH longer weekend then me, or each song is like 5 seconds long....am I missing something?
From TFA:
"They have fought the war on drugs with skill???"
What have you been smoking???
After reading the article, I still do not understand the iPod's shuffling algorithm.
The first half of the article is devoted to describing how the writer got the probabilities of rated songs and properties of these probabilities. Although these probabilities give some insight to the shuffling algorithm, they are pretty useless, since they are observed from unrealistic list of songs, i.e. 6 songs with different ratings.
Then cames the formula in Figure 2. How it is calculated and where from the author takes it, is not explained in the article. Also this formula is not backed up by empirical observation. The rest of the article is devoted to analyzing the effects of this formula, which are interesting, yet could have no importance if the actual formula is different. So this article does not really explore the iPod shuffling algorithm, but explores how would iPod shuffling algorithm work if the probability of the next song is calculated according to the formula provided by author. That is pretty useless, since we all can provide our own formulas and write the articles.
Now concerning this formula. To me it seems a litlle strange. Consider hypothetical situation of song list with 1000 unrated songs, and one with 5 star rating. The the probability (according to the formula provided by author) that the song with 5 star rating would come up is
0.27/(1000*0.039+0.27) = 0.006875477
which is pretty miserable odds. If I rated it so highly, that means I want to hear it a lot, now with such shuffling algorithm, I would hear it slightly more, yet not a lot. Of course, then I could create a playlist, with this song only, but then why one needs rating system, if it does not perform.
So it would be really interesting to know iPod's shuffling algorithm, to see if it saves the hassle of creating your own playlists. (Or even the possibility to provide your own algorithm), yet this article does not provide any insights.
Did they ever get one of those? I stopped using it about a year ago because the tracks would never get submitted due to 1) the DB server being crap and 2) the plugins were always out-of-date in relation to the ever changing protocol.
IMHO this is a stupid choice. If I have taken the time to give a song the lowest rating possible, to me, that should rate lower than a song I haven't gotten around to playing.
Knowing this, I think I will throw away songs that I think should have a one star rating, and give all of my unheard songs a 1 star.
San Francisco Photographers
because it puts a smile on my face just thinking about someone focusing on christian music going bankrupt.
I see the case for there being a "trick of the mind" in normal statistical variation.
But, if I have iTunes on random play of my whooooooole library, and if almost every time during a given session pressing the "next track" button after an unwanted song makes it play, in order, the exact same five or so songs , somethin's a little weird, methinks
there definitely seems to be some time-based randomness in the selection of tunes. often, i'll hear a song pop up randomly on my ipod in the car on the way into work, and then the song come up again, randomly, while being played on itunes at my desk.
go get it
Hence the shuffle terminology, not random play. It's like shuffling a deck of cards and going through it in that new random order, rather than picking songs at random from a hat and putting them back when you are done.
BI read the headline and imagine a story about the costs and revenues from Apple iTMS. Analysis of running the datacenters: costs of electricity, bandwidth, storage, etc.
Instead I read about some geek with way too much time on his hands. Yawn.
I did an art project for one of my studio classes based on people ability to extract meaning from randomness that was very much like the one described in the article. I took the spoken text of theBook of Genesis and chopped it up each time the reader paused for a period or comma. The result was 104 fragments ranging from 1 to 8 seconds in length.
When played randomly the pieces often came together in interesting ways, of course it's the interesting ones that we as humans pick up on ignoring the random noise.
Afterwards the file with the highest play count was "God made the expanse, and divided the waters which were under the expanse from the waters which were above the expanse; and it was so." with 128 plays followed by "Cattle" with 80 the rest continued to devalue until "and every tree, which bears fruit yielding seed." with 39, with no obvious connection between length and plays.
If people continue to abuse this feature, I will have to remove it. - Slashdot Comment Box, 1998
He should have measured the probabilities of 3 songs patterns for example. This way he would have detected wether iTunes implements something to prevent playing the same song twice in a row. That would be much more interesting I think. (of course to know this he needs to know a little more than just the play count)
points(0 stars)=1
points(1 stars)=3
points(2 stars)=4
points(3 stars)=5
points(4 stars)=6
points(5 stars)=7
probability(X stars) = points(X stars) / 26
This yields the following probabilities, listed along side the observed values from the article along with 95% condience intervals.
p(5 star)=.2692 [.270 +- .0038] .0036] .0033] .0031] .0027] .0016]
p(4 star)=.2308 [.230 +-
p(3 star)=.1923 [.189 +-
p(2 star)=.1538 [.154 +-
p(1 star)=.1154 [.118 +-
p(0 star)=.0385 [.039 +-
As you can see each computed probability falls within the 95% confidence interval, so there's a good chance this is the correct forumla.
Boy do I have too much time on my hands today.
Please change your sig. You look like an uninformed dumbass. We all know that MS abused their monopoly, but being a monopoly is not illegal. Therefore, the term "Convicted Monopolist" makes no sense. That's like saying, "Microsoft is a Convicted Software Business".
To really get an idea of how this works, you'd have to try playlists with different amounts of songs from each rating pool.
What if iTunes were deciding which rating the next song would have, and then randomly selecting a song with that rating?
With only 6 songs - one of each rating - it's impossible to see if this is happening or not.
I'm too lazy to actually test this myself...
Let me, an advanced user who knows a damn thing about computers and interfaces, change the weighting of the stars. I don't want my 5-star songs to play just twice as often as 2-star songs. I want them to 6 times as often. I want 4-stars to play 4 times, 3-stars to play 3 times, and no-stars to play 2 times.
Why no-stars? Because that way the majority of the collection is unrated. Stared songs really stand out in a playlist. 1 and 2 star songs play less often than no-stars, while 3, 4, and 5 play more often. But I want my favorites to play much more often than your arbitrary algorithm.
different kinds of nuts in a can of Planter's Mixed Nuts?
Andy Rooney did on 60 Minutes once, and that was pretty much it for Andy Rooney.
I dislike hearing a song too often and I also like to hear my favorite songs more often, but also not repetitevly. So, I have set up 6 playlists that gives me what I think is a good mix of my songs. They are as follows:
1: rated 2 and 25 rated by least recently
2: rated 3 and 73 rated by least recently
3: rated 4 and 70 rated by least recently
4: rated 5 and 32 rated by least recently
playlist is any of playlists 1, 2, 3, or 4 with live updating
The numbers (25, 73, 70, and 32) come from multiplying the number of songs in each category by the rating-1, so it is essentially the same as the "play higher rated songs" in PartyShuffle. I leave 1 rated songs for ones that I don't listen to very often. This way, I get a random selection of my music that does not repeat a song until I have more-or-less gone through the rest of them in that rating. And, it generally plays the 5 rated songs about 4 times more than the 1 rated songs.
I found that I do not like the random feature since it often will play one song significantly more than another song. Eventually, it would even out, but in the range of 20 times playing a song, there can be a large discrepancy and I haven't heard some songs in longer than I'd like.
Probability this dork has ever been to a party = 0.
This is the least interesting thing I have ever read on /.
But all this talk of 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 has me thinking of another rating system. Would anybody care to do an analysis of the ratings in Slashdot comments? What are the relative populations (I expect a ton of 2's but how about the rest)? Do comments made in the first hour after a story is posted stand a better chance of reaching +5 than comments made later in the day?
One of my gripes about the Slashdot comment system is that it discourages contemplation and discussion. Comments made more than 24 hours after a story is posted are rarely read and almost never moderated. This is in contrast with comments system like Usenet or other bulletin boards, where threads can remain lively for weeks.
AlpineR
that this entire project seems to be done while at work. Kudos, you are an inspiration to slackers everywhere.
I really liked it, but is there a way to save the stream ?
:D
It's just for listening music offline..
Christian music is here to stay. Your NIN, and APC/Tool are going bye-bye, faggotboi.
OMG, most boring article. EVER.
'Anyone who considers arithmetical methods
of producing random digits is, of course,
in a state of sin'. (John Von Neumann)
"Dude, I'm going to put this CD on the Internet right away."
"Yeah, dude, that's really lete [sic], you'll get lots of respect."
Dick: This dialogue between the youth-hooldlums is most compelling and believable.
Jane: Yes, it is so very much like the After School Specials of our parent's day.
Dick: Word!
Jane: Perhaps we should emulate these rad fellows and put our music online.
Dick: Ineed! It is teh lete to get teh respect.
Look kids! Comics!
YHBT YHL HAND
I have set up a set of chained playlists that works roughly like this:
5star - rating is 5 stars, last played > 24 hours ago
4star - rating is 4 stars, last played > 4 days ago
3star - rating is 3 stars, last played > 2 weeks ago
unrated - rating is 0 stars, last played > 6 weeks ago
2star - rating is 2 stars, last played > 12 weeks ago
weighted - playlist is 5star/4star/3star/2star/unrated
Feeding "weighted" into Party Shuffle doesn't seem to produce duplicates and I control what the ratings mean. One star songs don't ever show up.
The only time I hear a song twice in the same day is when I have two versions of it.
That's because I use a dynamic playlist with "last played is > 24 hours ago" as one of the rules.
But I have a playlist called "unambient" for stuff that I don't want to show up in party shuffle.
So I'm actually feeding party shuffle from "playlist is weighted and playlist is not unambient".
soon as i find the technologgie ime moving back to 8-track, - or at least Tape. its hissy, -and a bitch, but theres no Corporate Hassler on yur ass.
Sounds like you need a strong Brownian Motion producer (say a nice hot cup of tea).
[Apologies to Douglas Adams]
Two years ago, i replaced my car's tape player, which died after only 15 years of service, with an MP3 CD player. I cut a CD with 14 hours of my favorite stuff. I put the CD in the car, set it up to play in shuffle mode, and set out on a cross country trip. It was great. Just before i arrived, i heard a repeat. I was so disgusted i hit the eject button. Fortunately, i had another disc with me. Feh, i said. Can't even go 750 miles without having to change the CD.
-- Stephen.
If I has $1 for every time some christian has said to me that all atheists must be amoral, because "without religion, there's no basis for morality" I could retire in luxury.
And yet, it turns out that patrons at a Christian CD shop are a thieving bunch of pirates.
There's a Christian bookshop nearby, sells mostly bibles and bible-study aids. They used to have a little trestle table out the front of the shop, with a display of the kind of thing you could buy inside, but they don't do it any more, as too much of the display stock was being stolen !
Meanwhile the nearby Science bookshop has very little trouble with thieves....
Quidquid Latine dictum sit, altum videtur (anything said in Latin sounds important)
There's nothing in his methodology that gives him the right to make that claim.
From TFA, all of the tracks in his test suite had the same artist and genre.
Now, the various theories I've heard about iPod/iTunes non-randomness involve it using the artist and/or genre to play sequences of 'related' songs. The test the author ran was explicitly designed to exclude that possibility, so what basis does he have for the 'trick of the mind' claim?
Quidquid Latine dictum sit, altum videtur (anything said in Latin sounds important)
Going through my library I noticed a few duplicate songs I forgot to delete after converting (around the time apple relesed itunes with the ac3 conversion tool built in) from mp3 to ac3 (usually from mp3 256kbps to ac3 160kbps) and at somepoint i converted some ac3 to mp3 to transfer to an mp3 player that wont play ac3 I don't feel like analizing it compleetly but it looks like it has plays the ac3 version about 50% more often. This is based on looking at a few songs listed as bing imported 2 years ago in ac3 and the same song a year ago in mp3. the ac3s were played anywhere from 40-60 times the mp3 was played 10-20 times this was with various 3 4 and 5 star songs both the ac3 and mp3 version of a song had the same star rating. I usually listen to party shuffle with higher rated songs played more often, sometimes i'll play the library shuffled. sometimes i'll play from the library from highest rated to lowest rated. and sometimes the library from longest to shortest (some of those 2hr dj sets) current library size is about 8500 songs 32days 42gb
I forgot my password can I have yours