Add Star ratings when importing from iTunes/Music

[DJ_Big_Blender]

Hi All,

I previously submitted this feature request to keep star ratings in sync between iTunes/Music and Djay.

However, I’ve now discovered a separate limitation: star ratings are not imported at all when tracks are dragged and dropped from iTunes/Music into Djay on iMac. Since drag-and-drop is the only method available for importing tracks in Djay for macOS, this functionality is completely missing.

– Please see video. –

Here’s what I’ve observed:

• When tracks are imported into Djay using drag-and-drop from iTunes/Music, their star ratings are not carried over.
• Even after refreshing the library or restarting Djay, the ratings remain absent.

This lack of functionality creates challenges in managing my library. As someone who relies on star ratings for organizing and planning DJ sets, it’s frustrating that this essential metadata isn’t included during the import process.

I’d greatly appreciate it if the development team could add this capability to ensure star ratings are imported correctly into Djay. Combined with my earlier suggestion to sync ratings dynamically, this would create a comprehensive solution for managing track ratings seamlessly.

If you also rely on star ratings and want to reflect the star rating in Djay just as you have it in iTunes, please click the Vote button in the upper left corner to support this request.

Thank you for your time and attention to this matter!

[Slak_Jaw]

Hey @DJ_Big_Blender, thanks for the detailed suggestion and video. This is very helpful. I will pass this onto the dev team and link it to your other suggestion. Thanks!

[Markouchio]

• Device model: Macbook Pro
• Version of operating system MacOS 15.1.1
• Version of djay: 5.2.8
• Hardware/controllers used: Reloop Mixon 8 Pro

When selecting tracks from local App Music App to import them into a playlist under My Collection, the stars ratging is not properly imported for most of the songs, and I have to manually

Example: I copied 62 songs from a playlist below
Only 20 of them har their rating imported.
See the screenshots below:

[NotNice_DJ]

What file type are the tracks with the missing rating and what app are you importing the playlist from? Also, if you check the properties of the files are the rating saved in the metadata?

[dj_romy_fi]

This is a known issue already.
I.e in official MP3 tag specification (id3v2.4.0-frames - ID3.org) threre is no official metadata field to store rating info.

So, the rating metadata has been imlemented multiple different ways in all different music players how to read & store to files.

Yes, I know, multiple “players” try to figure out what is the metadata field for rating and show it correctly.

The issue is not in reading, but also in writing.
If you read it incorrectly, write it incorrectly to the file, then other tools can’t figure out how to interpret changed metadata field.

[Slak_Jaw]

Hi @Markouchio, I have merged your new topic with this existing suggestion as these seem related. Thanks.

[daniel_curley]

It’s quite simple to run bulk actions with djay on mac.
Why not import your 5 star rated tracks to my collection and add them to a playlist. Select all and then in the info section apply the rating.
It doesn’t sound like too much work as there are only 5 variations, would probably take 5 minutes

[daniel_curley]

Like this

[DJ_Big_Blender]

Hi @dj_romy_fi!
I appreciate the clarification about rating metadata being handled differently across various music players due to the lack of a standardized ID3 field (according to you).

However, in my case, I exclusively use iTunes/Music to assign star ratings to my tracks. That means, on my end, there is a single source for rating data. Despite this, I still encounter the same issue that @Markouchio mentioned—some ratings are imported into Djay correctly, while others are not.

This inconsistency suggests to me that the problem is not related to how the files are tagged or their source. Instead, it appears to be a random issue within Djay itself. Additionally, when I import my entire Djay library from iTunes/Music by dragging and dropping the whole directory, none of the ratings come through at all.

[DJ_Big_Blender]

Hi @daniel_curley,
I appreciate the suggestion, and that does seem like a reasonable workaround for now. However, as DJ’s who constantly are acquiring and importing new music, having to repeat this process every time becomes quite tedious.

Ultimately, good software should streamline workflows and make users’ lives easier, not force them to rely on more and more workarounds. Djay already has several areas where things feel unintuitive or where key features are missing, so adding yet another manual step takes time and distracts from the main goal—DJing. Especially when this extra step shouldn’t be necessary in the first place. Other DJ software handles this properly, so why wouldn’t Algoriddim be able to do the same?

They should be capable of handling these star issue because they are pretty close to Apple, won the Apple Design Award in 2024, and have successfully implemented Apple Music.

I really hope Algoriddim can address these Star-rating issues properly so we don’t have to keep patching things up manually. In the end, it’s not rocket science, and a proper fix would make the software more trust worthy and user experience much smoother.

[daniel_curley]

Quote from Phil Morse at Digital DJ Tips

“Thing is, we don’t actually advise DJs to use the Music app (formerly iTunes of course) that comes with Apple devices any more for music organisation here at Digital DJ Tips, finding that it causes a lot of problems and that it’s generally simpler just to use your DJ software to organise your music.”

Here’s the link

First Look At Algoriddim Djay Pro's Apple Music Integration

[daniel_curley]

The solution to your problem exists already within djay. If you don’t want to use it that’s on you.
I just can’t see the developers taking your requests and suggestions very seriously if you don’t want to use the software properly and you put all your efforts into 3rd party software.

[DJ_Big_Blender]

Hi Daniel (@daniel_curley). Thanks for bringing this up!

After watching the video, I noticed that Phil Morse makes a clear distinction between Apple Music (the streaming service) and Apple Music (the local library, formerly iTunes). He strongly warns against using the streaming service due to its many drawbacks (and I fully agree), but he does not specifically advise against using the local library for managing your owned music.

Moreover, he does not mention any concerns regarding the use of (Smart) Playlists within the local Apple Music library. Given this distinction, I find it hard to believe that he would be opposed to using Apple Music (local) as a central hub for storing and managing music. Many, many DJ’s do use Apple Music (local) as their central hub for music.

In fact, I would recommend this approach myself, as it has several advantages over managing your library solely within only one DJ software like Serato, VDJ, Djay, or Rekordbox. Because:

• Apple Music (local) (Formerly iTunes) has MUCH more powerful filtering options for creating Smart Playlists
• Using this avoids vendor lock-in, allowing easy switching between different DJ platforms

When you, for example, build your playlists mainly in DJay, you have far fewer possibilities to create and manage smart playlists. Additionally, maintaining your collection effectively in DJay is much more challenging. Issues like:

• Detecting and getting rid of duplicates
• Improving metadata
• Detecting bad tracks
• Managing tracks without artwork

are all very difficult to do within DJay. However, Apple Music (local) offer tools for managing these issues efficiently and there are much more external tools (like the DJ Conversion Utility) that do help you a lot.

Furthermore, after spending considerable time building your playlists in DJay, you might face a frustrating situation if you later decide to switch to another DJ software. All that effort in creating your DJay playlists could end up being wasted, as you would need to rebuild everything from scratch in the new software.

For example, if you’re playing at a venue that only accepts USB drives with music exported from RekordBox, this can become a real headache. DJay has now Export to USB Mode. But when using Apple Music (local) as your central hub, you can easily convert to RekordBox (or any other software), and you’re good to go without losing your hard work.

So I hope this clarifies why Apple Music (local) is just a great choice for managing your music library in a flexible and future-proof way and it also makes sense to convert star ratings in the right way when importing music in Djay.

[dj_romy_fi]

I did a small test.

Edited the rating and comment field on my mac i.e in Apple Music (or what so ever it’s called):

I was wondering where the “star” rating goes?

Checked on musicbrainz app on macos :

Comment was updated to tags, but not to correct ID3v tags, but additional “Comment” tag was created? Oops, now we are in trouble in DjPro, which of the comment is shown there?

Moved the file to my windows11, and the mp3 tag is saying that the file is corrupted!

Can’t find that rating field on windows.
Conclusion, it is not written into the file itself.

In this case, how would you even implement the metadata, medialibrary sync, when it’s not so easy to figure out where the data is?

On windows I edited the rating with windows mediaplayer and yes the rating is stored into the file as field “RATING WMP”:

[dj_romy_fi]

So, documentation how things works should be avaiable.

I.e what happens if I have different metadata on iTunes/Music, than on my actual files?
There should not be, or you have messed a lot.

Which data is read into medialibrary, in which order from file and from iTunes/Music?
Which data overrides another ?

If I write tags in djpro, does it write to files or what data is written to iTunes/Music?

[DJ_Big_Blender]

Hi,
I’m not a technician, so I can’t say for sure. But I believe it must be done in a similar way to how some other music software handles this. Apple likely stores the ratings somewhere other than in the file itself.

For example, Traktor had a command that could pull and import ratings in batch, and RekordBox offers the option “Get info from iTunes” to realign the ratings.

[dj_romy_fi]

My masterdata is always the file i.e the mp3/wav file.
I can move the file between machines and it contains all needed info, or at least it should contain all needed info.
In this case all needed tags, so that I don’t need to rely iTunes/Music, djPro or any other piece of software.

When all it’s in the file, all dj apps should be able to read it from there. No need to figure out what other files I need to transfer between Windows, macBook, iPad, Android phone …

[daniel_curley]

All well and good @DJ_Big_Blender but how’s it currently working out for you?