Most of the music is awesome, but there's some really bad songs too that my friends also dislike. So listeners could give their feedback, and if some song gets overwhelming thumbs ups, you could have it be played more often, and vice versa. Plus I'd be interested to see how many other people like songs I like. I recall you used to have comments enabled for songs some time ago, which would also be nice to know what other people like about a song! And I don't think this community could be toxic and misbehave with voting. Thanks for the great music! Listening to it every day.

Updated 8 January 2024 (22:48)

Posted by SarahelmiMost of the music is awesome, but there's some really bad songs too that my friends also dislike. So listeners could give their feedback, and if some song gets overwhelming thumbs ups, you could have it be played more often, and vice versa.Plus I'd be interested to see how many other people like songs I like. I recall you used to have comments enabled for songs some time ago, which would also be nice to know what other people like about a song!And I don't think this community could be toxic and misbehave with voting. Thanks for the great music! Listening to it every day.

Elrond did restore the ratings capabilities for the songs, buttt I believe you have to use the search capability to find the song and then click on it. Used to, you could see the rating in the web player. I've found more often than not that my rating is not too far a variation from the general audience. Fortunately, I doubt you have to worry much about voting misbehavior. Ratings have been around for longer than I have been a listener (I started back in 2011) and I haven't seen too many instances of song trolling. I did see some snarky responses or "I'm just going to give this a 1 because I don't like the title", but that is way more the exception than the rule. I've found one of the problems with ratings is that different people have different "curves". For example, I tend to give very few 5s and very few 1s, as my rating is more on a bell curve (it has to be truly exceptional or truly bad to get an extreme rating). Some, however, vote more linearly (roughly, this is in my top 20% of songs, so I'm giving it a 5). So a like/dislike might actually be a decent idea (you can roughly get the "quality" of a song by its ratio). If you didn't know it, by the way, there is a "Request Song" feature on the various channels! For example, in the main channel, you can request a song (as long as you haven't requested too recently) with this link: https://play.radiorivendell.com/public/radio_rivendell . There are also requests on the Lothlorien and the Green Dragon channels: https://play.radiorivendell.com/public/l%C3%B3rien https://play.radiorivendell.com/public/the_green_dragon It won't always prevent you from hearing "bad" songs, but you can at least hear what you want to hear more often.

Yes, I really should get the rating functionality back so we can remove unwanted tracks. There are a few that most people would like to vote down. Sounds very reasonable And.. by going to "thumbs up" and "thumbs down" would make the rating simpler. Perhaps it's not very useful and worth to have the 1-5 rating we have now? What are your thoughts? Either it's good or you don't like it. Any thoughts?

Updated 29 January 2024 (09:37)

Posted by ElrondYes, I really should get the rating functionality back so we can remove unwanted tracks. There are a few that most people would like to vote down. Sounds very reasonable And.. by going to "thumbs up" and "thumbs down" would make the rating simpler. Perhaps it's not very useful and worth to have the 1-5 rating we have now? What are your thoughts? Either it's good or you don't like it. Any thoughts?

There is a lot to like about thumbs up/thumbs down because of the simplicity. But one thing that concerns me is many of these artists would probably like something a bit more informative, especially since many of them may tend to check more often early than later (if they are checking at all). If a song has only been on the radio for a short period of time and has gotten a single down vote, it may be misleading and a bit disheartening, as opposed to it getting a 3 (perhaps someone was a bit on the fence but decided it wasn't a favorite). I think an up/down vote works pretty well if the song has many votes, but with only a handful it likely won't be representative of a full listening audience.

I think you are right! We'll keep the stars, it makes the rating more granular as well. It can be a good song or an extremely good song 😀