Allow me to spread the word about ListenBrainz. ListenBrainz is a FOSS project that aims to crowdsource listening data from digital music and release it under an open license. Basically it's Last.fm but better. Whatever you use to listen to music, you can probably link it up with ListenBrainz. All ListenBrainz listening data is available for all to use, commercially or not. Why should we give our listening data only to proprietary companies like Spotify and depend on them, when we can share it. If you've kept track of your what music you've listened to up to this point, don't worry, there are several ways to import them into ListenBrainz so you can keep an overview of all your music listening.
I am not working for ListenBrainz in any way, I just really like this project, and I had not seen much on Lemmy about them, so I'm happy to spread the word.
Does listenbrainz sync "likes" to musicbrianz?
Not sure what you mean. I don't think there is a like function in MusicBrainz, is there? You can 'love' or 'hate' tracks in ListenBrainz
On MusicBrainz there's a 1-5 rating. A "like" could be a synced a 5 ⭐ rating.
Ah yes you're right, I forgot about that because I've never used either of those option. But it's actually quite inconsistent that on MB you get the 5 start rating scale and on ListenBrainz you only get like/hate. Your suggestion to link them definitely makes sense to me.
Star ratings are kinda dumb in most situations.
The average user doesn't think about how much they like or dislike something. They're either neutral towards it (no interaction), they like it or they dislike it.
Most people's libraries will probably be full of 1 star and 5 stars.
I definitely use stars.
A "like" doesn't let me know if it's my favorite or not. There are good songs I can listen to often, but that don't make me start going "ooooh, this is a banger". And simply not putting a "like" or a "heart" next to a song doesn't indicate whether I disliked it or simply haven't rated it yet for some reason.
It's why upvote and downvote aren't good for me. Right now, I'll downvote your comment because I disagree and it's the only option I have. But if it there were a more nuanced method of giving feedback (emojis or something not text), I'd use that instead.
You're not the average user.
Also upvote / downvote is not supposed to be about your opinion, it was supposed to be "contributes / does not contribute to the conversation". But most people tend to use it to voice their opinion.
I'll give you an upvote because you're contributing to the conversation, and your perspective is important.
There was a (small) user survey to see how our MetaBrainz forum members use ratings. Not a big enough sample size, nor from a broad enough spread of users, to take as gospel, but still interesting: https://community.metabrainz.org/t/the-future-of-ratings/604271/57