My wife had a 20GB iPod (4G greyscale). She complained that it couldn't hold everything she wanted. So she bought an 80GB iPod Classic, which is big enough to load up our entire music library. Now she's complaining that it has loads of music (ie. my weird stuff) that she doesn't like!

She tends to put it on shuffle in her pocket while working (she's a painter & decorator by trade). What would be really nice is if there was some quick way to mark a track on the iPod so that it can then (at a later date) inform iTunes that the song is not wanted and should be removed from the database. The closest we can find to this would be to use the rating facility, but it's a bit of a hassle. It seems you have to press the center button a couple of times to bring up the "dots" then use the wheel to set a rating.

Any thoughts on this from experienced iPod users? Is there a quicker way to set a song rating, or some other song-marking feature we haven't discovered?

The rating system is the only way to mark songs using an iPod. It would be easier if she went through her entire iTunes library and gave every song of hers at least a 3 star rating. You can then setup a smart playlist within iTunes that will automatically add songs that have 3 star or higher ratings. Then she can simply shuffle that big playlist.

You could also create a playlist for your wife that would exclude your weird stuff

Making "On The Go" list is another way to mark songs on iPod.

1) I doubt that there can be any quicker way to rate a song than press a button three times in a row. I don't see how this can be a bit of a hassle.

2) My solution: You rate all of your music 5 stars, she rates her music 4 stars, music both of you like gets three stars. Create three smart playlists, one for 5, one for 4 and one for 3 stars. Set your iPod to sync with the 5-star and the 3-star playlist, her iPod to sync with the 4-star and 3-star playlist.

In iTunes under view-view options, there is a checkbox for "skip count" and a checkbox for "last skipped". The ipod keeps track of this info and puts it in the songs' tags. With these selected those become columns you can see in iTunes. If she finds herself wondering "what was that song I really hated" she can look it up this way.

Thanks to everyone for their feedback. The main problem we have is that there is quite a big overlap in the music my wife & I like, and there have been many occasions when she has heard an album of mine and said "that's great - why haven't you told me about this before?". Whether she likes some of my music or not seems completely unpredictable.

However, Jeff's reply looks to be the most promising:

Looks like she could zero all the skip counts on the iPod, then put it into shuffle mode, and simply hit the "skip track" button when something comes on she doesn't like. Then later in iTunes she could delete everything from her library that has been skipped. Have I understood that correctly?

There is a littel contradiction in your posts. In your first post you said


This sounds like the two of you have a single library. In this case, she would delete your music as well. Better try the method I suggested in that case.

Now you say


If you have two different libraries, then JeffStickney's method is better.

Sorry - I clearly didn't explain things clearly enough. We have a single music library (LAME MP3s) for use on portable players - her iPod and my Rio Karma. She points iTunes at it, and I point Rio Music Manager at it.

She can delete an entry from her iTunes database without affecting the MP3 files themselves. That's what I meant when I said "she could delete everything from her library that has been skipped".