use Perl

The truth of it is, I just use a few check points to choose a rating, not some absolute numerical value, and I just don't use the same check list between the lists. Here is what works for me:

iRate radio

iRate radio is a system that chooses music for you, based on your rating of everything it gave you before, and the ratings of other people whose taste in music appears to have a correlation to yours.

Ratings go from 0 to 4 stars:

• 0 stars (score: 0/10): "This sux"
  "Get rid of it now!" If this song was playing on the radio, I'd go and turn it off. I really don't want to hear one second more, not now, not ever.
• 1 star (score: 2/10): "Yawn"
  Not bad, but I find myself somewhat waiting for it to finish. Typical radio filler. Warrants roughly 3 plays total, spread over several weeks.
• 2 stars (score: 5/10): "Not bad"
  This is the stuff I almost like, but which somehow doesn't quite convince me. Not a keeper, good for roughly 10 plays total, but preferably spread at least a few days apart.
• 3 stars (score: 7/10): "Cool"
  This is a keeper. I'd put it on myself, I can easily listen to it several times in one day.
• 4 stars (score: 10/10): "Love it"
  This is the kind of stuff I buy records for. At its peak I can easily play it several times in a row.

By choice, only stuff I rate 7/10 and higher (thus, 3 or 4 stars), will end up in my permanent music collection.

Winamp media library

This is my own personal permanent music collection, holding only the music I want to keep. Ratings go from 1 to 5 stars. As there's no reason to keep stuff I don't like, there wouldn't be much there to rate 1 or 2 stars as in iRate. That's a bit of a waste, so I don't do that: roughly, 1 star out of 5 here, agrees with a score between 6/10 and 7/10 on iRate.

My personal check points are as follows:

• 1 star
  Sometime I even wonder why I'm keeping it. Decent enough, but nothing to really draw me in.
• 2 stars
  Occasionally I can actually feel its attraction, but at other times, it slips. After a while I even tend to forget about it.
• 3 stars
  Very good track. I remember who it is by, what album it's on, what other tracks there are on the same album... Good album filler.
• 4 stars
  This is a good single, I'd buy it.
• 5 stars
  A classic. Tracks this good don't come often. If my record where it is on got broken, I'd buy it again.

So, there isn't really a straightforward connection between these two checklists. But each on its own has its own well working guide points. So they both work for me, and do so consistently.