If you use both Windows Media Player and iTunes to manage your music, keeping your ratings synchronised can be a pain. Orzeszek Ratings lets you sync your play counts and ratings between Windows Media Player and iTunes with two clicks.
Windows Media Player and iTunes must be installed on the same computer, and must be pointing to the same files for Orzeszek Ratings to sync the play counts and ratings for the files.
That means that ratings and play counts for any files that are converted when they’re added to your library (like WMA files added to iTunes) won’t be synced, since your Windows Media Player library and iTunes library are no longer referring to the same file.
You may also want to check out MusicBridge. MusicBridge has a few more options, including the ability to sync track number, name, artist, album, album artist, year, genre, album art, and rating (but no option to sync play count).
However, I’ve found that MusicBridge’s rating sync is quirky. Some 3-star ratings in Windows Media Player become 2.5-star ratings when synced to iTunes, etc. The reasons are explained somewhat here. This quirkiness is one of the reasons why I wrote Orzeszek Ratings.
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
ty made everything so much easier
I’m glad it worked.
I was looking for a software that can add playcounts of iTunes and WMP. I use iPod whose playcount is automatically added to iTunes playcount. However, on my PC I use WMP to play music. It will be great if both the playcounts are added instead of replacing one with another. I hope you will add this option in the next release. Please update me on my email if u add any such feature.
thanks
ujjwal
That can’t work.
Suppose that you have a song, and you play it three times in WMP and five times in iTunes (or on the iPod). The first time you add the play counts together, you would get eight, which is the correct amount.
However, then your play count in WMP would be eight and your play count in iTunes would be eight. If you synced again (without playing the song), adding the play counts together, you would get 16, which is wrong.
I’ve updated Orzeszek Ratings, adding two options: ‘Only sync play count if higher’ and ‘Aggregate and move play count’. The first only syncs the play count to the destination application if the play count in the source application is higher than the play count in the destination application. The second adds the two play counts together, stores that aggregate in the destination application, and zeros the play count in the source application.
This isn’t a perfect way to aggregate the play counts, but some people may find this way useful. (As far as I can tell, there is no way to do it properly.)
You can get the new version from http://www.orzeszek.org/dev/ratings.
does not work with itunes 9, build.70
It’s working for me with iTunes 9.0.1.8. Can you provide any further details?
Just a thought… perhaps ratings could be aggregated if the time of each aggregation/sync was recorded and then the next time it synced all the plays since the previous sync were aggregated and added to both players’ playcounts (if that made any sense at all)
@Kaylee: That could be done, but you would have to turn this little utility into a whole app. Right now, it just copies the data from the WMP database to the iTunes database, or vice versa. To do a proper aggregation of the play counts, the application would have to maintain its own database of all of your music.
I’m afraid I just don’t have time to design something like that at the moment. Sorry.