Rate your music on your iPad


iPad and music

Although there's no way to give a song two thumbs up in iTunes, you can assign an album or each song in your collection a one- to five-star rating. Then you can use the ratings to produce only playlists of the greatest hits on your hard drive. If you assign an album just one rating, all the songs on the album get the same number of stars. If you rate just a couple tracks on an album but not all of them, the album rating reflects the typical of the rated songs - so an album with two five-star songs along with a bunch of unrated tracks gets a five-star rating.

To add ratings, first make sure you turn on the Album Rating and/or Rating columns in the iTunes View Options box. Click on the song you want to rate to highlight it. iTunes displays five dots in the Rating column. When you click a dot, iTunes turns it into a star. Now either drag the mouse over the column to create one to five stars, or click one from the dots itself to apply a rating.

Once you assign ratings, you can sort your song list by star rating, create a Smart Playlist of only your personal favorites, and so forth. You can even rate songs on your iPad, and iTunes records the ratings the next time you sync up. To rate an audio lesson on your iPad, start playing it and tap the small album cover in the Now Playing corner to switch to the full-screen Now Playing window.

Tap the screen to get the hidden playback controls to appear, then tap the icon on the bottom right corner. The album cover spins around to show the track listing. Swipe your finger across the row of dots above the song list to rework those empty dots into critical stars for the track that's currently playing.

Internet radio and the iPad

Unsatisfied with being a mere virtual jukebox, iTunes also can serve as an international radio - without the shortwave static. You can tune in everything from mystical Celtic melodies to Zambian rap. Computers with high-speed Internet connections have a smoother streaming experience, but the vast and eclectic mixture of music is well worth checking out - even with a dial-up modem. Just click radio stations icon in iTunes' Source list to see a list of stations.

If you find your radio streams constantly stuttering and stopping, summon iTunes' Preferences box (Ctrl+comma). Click the Advanced icon or tab on the right side from the box. Then, from the Streaming Buffer Size popup menu, choose Large. Click OK.

You may have to wait a little longer for that music to start, but iTunes will pre-load enough data to lessen the stutters. Once you listen to all the stations listed in iTunes, hit the Internet. Windows 7 and Mac OS X users can enjoy them through iTunes by clicking the yellow Tune In button. XP users, save the offered .pls file to your desktop and then drag and drop it on "Playlists". Click the resulting "tunein-station" playlist.

Legal Disclaimer

Our website is not responsible for the information contained by this article. Webworldarticles.com is a free articles resource thus practically any visitor can submit an article. However if you notice any copyrighted material, please contact us and we will remove the article(s) in discussion right away.


This article was sent to us by: Bryan Griffin at 02272011

Related Articles

1. How to register or activate your iPod Touch
iPod touch registration Once you have iTunes installed or updated on your computer, you are ready to connect your iPod touch for the first time and get it regis...

2. Useful iPod Touch applications and settings
ipod touch Inside Apps and the Settings Screens Getting around the screens inside the apps on your iPod touch is as simple as tapping on the screen. Tap...

3. How to use the two onscreen keyboards on your iPod Touch
You'll find two onscreen keyboards on your iPod touch: the smaller one visible when you hold your iPod touch in a vertical orientation, and the larger landscape keyboard ...

4. Digital data versus analog data storage
Data with distinct values is called discrete data. Data with continuous values is called analog data. Discrete data stored in binary form is digital. Just think of "dig...

5. Common output devices of a personal computer
A monitor, the most important output device, is a computer display screen. Early monitors displayed white or a single color on a black background, but current monitors ...

6. Main memory in a PC consists of RAM
The main memory in a computer is made of RAM, which stands for Random Access Memory. The term "random access" means the same thing: that the data in the memory can be acc...

7. Modern CPUs: Backwards compatibility, pipelining, heat dissipation
Designers of modern CPUs have challenges that weren't faced in the early days of computing. Most personal computers sold today are descendants of the IBM PC and probably ...

8. A closer look at some of the internal components of a PC
Motherboard The components inside a computer are located on a large circuit board called the motherboard. If you looked at a motherboard, you would see the CPU,...

9. Types of software usually used on a PC
Software can be categorized many different ways. One way is to divide all programs into a few broad categories: system software, application software, utility software, a...