No way to sync music ratings

[Juliguli]

I do not see any way to sync music ratings to my WP8. I have an extensive library, all of which will not fit onto the phone. I do a lot of my music listening and sorting by rating, and I would like to be able to sync ratings to and from the phone. However, because it uses the Zune's heart, no heart, broken heart rating system, and WMP, iTunes, and file explorer all use a 1-5 star rating system, none of the ratings sync.

I tried syncing via the desktop app on W8 to itunes, then to libraries, then just dragging via file explorer, then the touch app on W8, and finally WMP. None of them got any ratings to or from the phone. Since you can longer sync to Zune, the heart rating system is useless to me.

It would be nice if at least it had some kind of translation, like no heart is 3 stars, heart is 5 stars, broken heart 1 star.

 

[vedichymn]

Ugh, my replies keep getting flagged or something, not quite sure why.

Anyway, here's what I did, it should work, but doesn't quite work because the desktop sync software is broken:

1. Opened up Windows Media Player, and pointed it to my Zune music folders. It seems to have some ability to translate the Zune heart/broken heart system into star ratings, although it's not quite as smart as you mentioned. Most of my heart songs became 4 star rated.
2. Imported all my music from the Zune music folders into iTunes
3. Ran Musicbridge to sync the star ratings from Windows Media Player to iTunes
4. Created a smart playlist in iTunes based on the star ratings of the songs I wanted to sync
5. Opened up the Windows Phone 8 desktop software and told it to sync that iTunes smart playlist to my phone.

Unfortunately, that's where things end, as the desktop software crashes before it finishes syncing my song, but maybe you will have better luck than I did.

I have no idea what happens if you heart/broken heart a song on the phone, I suspect that won't get synced back to the desktop at all. Overall the sync setup in Windows Phone 8 is a huge step backwards from Windows Phone 7.

 

[Juliguli]

Yeah, I ended up doing something kind of similar.

1. I also downloaded musicbridge (another one called orzezek ratings was good too), synced my ratings from iTunes to WMP (had been using ipod previously as my music holding device).
2. I then created a smart playlist in WMP for songs rated 4 or 5, and set up sync with my phone via WMP of just that playlist. That way at least my top rated songs will be on my phone.

While I wait for Microsoft to make the desktop/immersive apps better on W8, I will just continue to use my ipod as my main listening/rating device, and let it sync up with itunes. Then, once in while I will follow the steps above to get only the best songs on my phone.

 

[gerbir21]

Hi Folks... thanks for sharing the above tips. Though that is a whole lot of work to do for something that should be built into the app/OS. The ratings system is severely lacking for Xbox music. My music collection is catalogued and rated primarily in iTunes. I'm a big windows phone fan, but the music system is a serious pain point for this OS. If you feel strongly about the ratings system, please vote on the Xbox user voice forum. Hopefully the team will consider this for future updates. link is below:

Introduce a user rating system! – Xbox Music Suggestion Box