I recently checked in a new one-click ratings system on ccMixter. For logged in users they can now do the hover-over-stars-and-click on the ratings:

A few months ago when we separated the reviewing from the ratings based on customer’s complaints that they wanted to review without rating and rate without reviewing. In the process we made it just too cumbersome to rate so they stopped doing it all together. In the past few days we’ve had more rated songs that the last few weeks combined so this check in has already paid off.

Coincidentally Lucas has some thoughts on the subject:

In my own rating systems, I finally got code that I was happy with when I stopped thinking about them as measures of goodness. What I started doing instead was use ratings as a probability that a random user in some some well-known context would like something.

Of course most people “like something” when it’s got “goodness” — but I think we all know what he meant.

I still have this fantasy that ccMixter can actually be a place where non-musicians hang out and get good open music, using the edpicks or user picks podcasts as a radio resource. It’s a pretty serious pipe dream because I just can’t imagine Acid Planet or GarageBand is visited by people who aren’t musicians, leave alone ccMixter. For me, ratings is strictly a way to populate those streams.