Hello! After discovering that navidrome implements smart playlists, I've been seriously thinking about using faves or ratings.
What about you? Do you use ratings and faves, and if yes, for what reason? Do you use track or album ratings? I'm curious, since I'm sure one can get pretty creative with it.
I definitely use favorites. I’ve never really cared enough for the rating system. I almost use the favorites button as a bookmark for albums and songs I don’t want to lose in the collection.
I see! What I'm trying to wrap my head around is the need for a playlist that I can just throw on the car or the home hifi when I have guests that will output a strong selection, meaning stuff I either very much like or absolutely love. My server has every CD I have in the house copied onto it; and while I am sure that nobody minds Bob Dylan, my dad's collection of over 30cd gets a little invasive after I hit random shuffle of all songs.
I kind of solved that with favorites. For albums I favorite them like I said previously to bookmark them to see all of the ones I care about most front and center.
The favorites for songs though, I use for the use case you described above. Every song I favorite gets added into a playlist using Navidrome’s “smart playlist” feature automatically.
Don’t get me wrong I use playlists ritually, but for an easy “brain off” playlist with every single song I clicked the heart on automatically, it can’t be beaten for ease of use.
Ratings are amazing. Bad song? Jusz rate it with 1 or 2 stars and you'll never hear of it again!
Good song? 4 stars. Very good song you want to listen each day? 5 stars. Could be a good song? 4 stars. OK song 3 -> stars. 3 stars are like radio songs. You don't really like them, you wouldn't play them by yourself but it's ok if they play in the background.