Do you care about and use play counts in your media manager (e.g. iTunes)?


Do you care about play counts/watched flags?  

63 members have voted

  1. 1. Which media manager/player do you use, and does it support play counts?

    • iTunes, so YES it does.
    • Windows Media Player/Media Center/... so YES, it does.
    • Songbird or other open source media managers, so YES, it does!
    • Other media manager. YES supports them
    • Other media manager/player. NO support for play counts.
  2. 2. Do you care about them?

    • No
    • Yes
    • Yes, and I also create smart playlists based on them.
    • Yes, I also use smart playlists and it helps me select stuff for synching to my smartphone/tablet.
    • N/A
      0
  3. 3. If you care about play counts/watch flags, what media do you want or need it for?

    • N/A - I don't give a damn
    • Music
    • TV Shows
    • Movies
    • Other kinds of videos (Youtube downloads, home videos of friends or you, etc)
    • Books


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I'm obsessed with my play counts, as it lets me create better smart play lists, see which movie I still need to watch (sometimes you're not sure) and generally is awesome for the statistic nazi in me! :laugh:

I'm addicted and obsessed, what about you?

Glassed Silver:mac

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Media Jukebox and hell yeah I do!!!

I got a new HDD and I redid my file structure and this install is less then 2 months old so I can't flaunt much at the moment....

however the song with the most plays that i can remember ever is Face 2 Face-Future Trance United (All 4 remixes) That is my theme song!! I love it!!

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I really don't care about the play count in general on my end, but then again, what music I do listen to on my computer, usually takes a back seat to internet radio which I prefer over the played music.

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Updated poll with another question. :)

Feel free to delete your votes and submit them again to answer that last question too if you wish. (Y)

Glassed Silver:mac

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Nope. Being a poor schmuck I listen to my favorites at most given moments over and over until it starts to annoy me and I don't want to hear it anymore. Sometimes I listen to some fragment over and over in another program (editor) or manually skipping. WMP keeps counting as it does but the number is inflated, even wrong and definitely useless.

I don't generally have background music on these days, it tends to distract me - my HyperThreading's been really unrealiable since the latest BIOS update somewhere after my 18th or so :/

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Nope. Being a poor schmuck I listen to my favorites at most given moments over and over until it starts to annoy me and I don't want to hear it anymore. Sometimes I listen to some fragment over and over in another program (editor) or manually skipping. WMP keeps counting as it does but the number is inflated, even wrong and definitely useless.

I don't generally have background music on these days, it tends to distract me - my HyperThreading's been really unrealiable since the latest BIOS update somewhere after my 18th or so :/

WMP counts skipped tracks as played?

Glassed Silver:mac

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I'd like it, actually, but I mostly play my iPod in the car which has the Microsoft Sync system in it--it's playing the songs from the iPod but it doesn't record the play counts, so the only ones I get are when it's disconnected or the play counts at home when I play music on the PC. So, basically, not accurate at all. I have manually created a few playlists, but I don't use the smartlist feature.

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Yes. In a way that a song has to reach the end naturally, even from the very last second - then up the counter goes.

Edit: Phouchg:StrangeOS

Wait... so how does this actually trigger the play count when you skip them lol, the integral part of skipping is that you don't reach the end. :laugh:

Glassed Silver:mac

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Wait... so how does this actually trigger the play count when you skip them lol, the integral part of skipping is that you don't reach the end. :laugh:

Glassed Silver:mac

I may have used the term "skipping" incorrectly here. What I wanted it to mean was skipping to a certain point, for example, the final chorus of a track (happens a lot with soundtracks), not skipping it altogether. Because I'm too lazy to open up an editor and loop it. And then crop it and save it. It does reach the end usually and the play count goes up... I mean, the usual fade out at the end is a giveaway that I have to Ctrl-Alt-B or F a little.

On the other hand, I'm, for example, oftimes very moved by the first two minutes of Primavera but not the orchestra (does not fit the mood). Now, I've listened to it for an hour at a time, but the play count doesn't go up, because I've got five more minutes to rewind it and I usually manage.

WMP is not as dumb as people make it, it's just me being OCD and otherwise amusing in a what-a-hell-is-wrong-with-you kind of way :)

In any case, play count and me are not compatible - how would one count a partial play? A half-play? 10%? Or is it still full 1 play, because without having the whole thing I wouldn't be able to enjoy any part of it either?

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Well, if you listened to it twice 50%, give it one count up lol

It's easy, set loop mode on single track and click in the very end of the time slider repeatedly till your count is correct from your playing session :p

To me, I skip tracks in that way, too, but really, to me those few lost counts are not THAT important.

Sure, play counts don't work 100% correctly in that way, but still very fine and are still excellent in finding your personal charts, determining automatic synchs, etc...

Also they aid the statistic Nazi in me as I said before :D

Now, with other media for example, this is less of a problem: movies and tv shows you normally watch in full and if not, their playback position is saved for your convenience to pick up later or at least see that you only partially played it. (Y)

I like your OCD way of doing things, reminds me a lot of me lol :laugh:

Glassed Silver:mac

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  • 4 months later...

No matter how you may rate a song, 3 stars or 5 stars, nothing tells you how much you like a song more than the play count. Same for albums and artists.

Play count is the best gauge for what you really like, not what you think you like.

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  • 1 month later...
  • 2 months later...

I use Foobar, Spotify and my phone, everything comes together on my Last.fm profile.

I can't believe nobody else mentioned that. It's the ultimate solution for play counts since it works with pretty much anything.

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I only really cared when I was wanted to free up space, so looked for the number of plays: 0/1/2 etc. and found that actually ipod's random is just crap and actually it didn't play a load of songs but played some other songs all the time.

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I use iTunes, so it keeps count of my songs, but I only check occasionally to see what my most listened to music is. I can't say that I care about it though, if it got reset (a new computer, for example) I wouldn't mind at all.

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I use Winamp and YES it does support play counts. I do not care about or even pay any attention to play counts. Couldn't care less.

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I only really cared when I was wanted to free up space, so looked for the number of plays: 0/1/2 etc. and found that actually ipod's random is just crap and actually it didn't play a load of songs but played some other songs all the time.

I was actually just thinking to myself why on earth would anyone care at all about how many times they chose to listen to a song, so thank you for providing a reason it does actually make sense.

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I tend to just leave my music player on shuffle as I have more than enough songs to never hear the same song more than twice in several weeks. So while playcounts are a fun little "did you know that" type statistic, they hold little management value to me.

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