Rate songs (heart) in the Marketplace with the Zune Pass

Unless I'm doing something weird, it seems that you can't rate (heart/broken-heart) songs in the Marketplace using the Zune Pass. You actually have to download a song to your collection before you can rate it. Since the Smart DJ is fed by your ratings, this seems like a pretty big oversight.

Who would download a song to their collection to give it a bad rating?

However, you can rate songs while in the Smart DJ mode. At least there's that.

Yes- you are doing something weird.  When you rate a track, you're essentially marking it.  You can't do that to a track that isn't either on your PC or on your zune.  The software has enough to do without having to keep track of ratings on some random number of marketplace tracks that you just might download some day...and which occasionally get changed by the content provider, or removed from the marketplace, or...? and so on.

 NSILMike wrote:

Yes- you are doing something weird.  When you rate a track, you're essentially marking it.  You can't do that to a track that isn't either on your PC or on your zune.  The software has enough to do without having to keep track of ratings on some random number of marketplace tracks that you just might download some day...and which occasionally get changed by the content provider, or removed from the marketplace, or...? and so on.

Well, I humbly disagree. When I meant "weird" I meant am I missing some step or procedure. Rating songs I don't own isn't terribly burdonesome or strange. Before I bought the Zune HD, I was a subscriber to Rhapsody for years, which allowed you to rate any song whether you owned it or not, and you could create random playlists or radio stations (just like the Smart DJ) based on that rating information. In fact, Rhapsody took it a step further and the ratings are 1-5 stars plus a "don't ever play this again" option. Pandora does nothing but track people's ratings on songs they don't own. So I guess it's a matter of where those ratings are stored, either locally or on a server somewhere attached to my account.

 

 

 Mortal Peril wrote:

 NSILMike wrote:

Yes- you are doing something weird.  When you rate a track, you're essentially marking it.  You can't do that to a track that isn't either on your PC or on your zune.  The software has enough to do without having to keep track of ratings on some random number of marketplace tracks that you just might download some day...and which occasionally get changed by the content provider, or removed from the marketplace, or...? and so on.

Well, I humbly disagree. When I meant "weird" I meant am I missing some step or procedure. Rating songs I don't own isn't terribly burdonesome or strange. Before I bought the Zune HD, I was a subscriber to Rhapsody for years, which allowed you to rate any song whether you owned it or not, and you could create random playlists or radio stations (just like the Smart DJ) based on that rating information. In fact, Rhapsody took it a step further and the ratings are 1-5 stars plus a "don't ever play this again" option. Pandora does nothing but track people's ratings on songs they don't own. So I guess it's a matter of where those ratings are stored, either locally or on a server somewhere attached to my account.

Relax... I merely turned your humor around because I liked it. 

Yes they are stored...the difference is all those tracks are in their library while on a device centric system, there is no way to force a linking of your content to the marketplace database- so the ratings are hit or miss and neither you nor smart DJ know where the hits and misses are... (Linking in this context means that both you and the marketplace agree on what precisely that 'track' is...as in the tags,etc. match up.)

I noticed this also.  I downloaded the latest album by "The Growlers"  and "Old Cold River" was playing.  I wanted to give it a heart.  Even after downloading, in Marketplace on the main album view there is no way to rate it.  Also, when it went to screen saver view of the album while playing the heart rating system was not there.  The only way to rate it was to switch to my collection, show zune pass content, then the ratings were available both in album view and screen saver mode.

Kind of odd that a downloaded song can only be rated if I get to it from a certain way.  Also, I agree that rating pure zune pass non downloaded stuff would help with smart dj and suggestions for music I might want to download and maybe one day buy.

 Johnny Dancing wrote:

I noticed this also.  I downloaded the latest album by "The Growlers"  and "Old Cold River" was playing.  I wanted to give it a heart.  Even after downloading, in Marketplace on the main album view there is no way to rate it.  Also, when it went to screen saver view of the album while playing the heart rating system was not there.  The only way to rate it was to switch to my collection, show zune pass content, then the ratings were available both in album view and screen saver mode.

Kind of odd that a downloaded song can only be rated if I get to it from a certain way. 

you can also just replay the album after it's finished downloading, then you can rate songs.

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Herbal Scientist. Music Connoisseur.