MP3 ratings?

I use Mp3Tag to edit the information of files that for some reason won't let me change their properties through the Properties window in Windows Explorer (as in, I can change them and click "Ok" or "Apply", but the information isn't changed in the explorer window and when I close properties and open them again, the information is how it was before the change. If anyone knows why some files do this, I'd love to know).

One file with that problem has a rating (the one that shows in WMP), and I'm wondering how to change it through Mp3Tag, because I can't find it by going to Costumize columns. Please describe the solution in detail, because I'm a total noob.

I would strongly advise AGAINST editing any tags with software written by Microsoft, most particularly the Windows OS (Explorer properties); I've found this to be very destructive.

WMP stores its Ratings in its own special flavor of ID3 "POPM" (POPULARIMETER) tags, which can be accessed in MP3Tag as "Rating WMP" in order to translate the 0-255 scale to five stars properly.

Note that I've seen reports that Rating files within WMP will wipe out other tag data (ReplayGain?), so again, I'd advise you to find a player written by people that care about tag data integrity.

But then of course they'll have their own proprietary scheme for Ratings, which MP3Tag may or may not interpret.

This is one of the most non-standard areas of audio file tagging, personally at this point I keep that sort of information in a database rather than tags.

that was true, but not so much anymore. POPM is pretty universal now, and works as said at wiki:

what mp3tag does, is it takes the text string part of a rating and uses that to ID the app that wrote
the rating, and so POPULARIMETER does not work if mp3tag sees the string that say WMP uses.

I have asked Florian for years now, to not disable POPULARIMETER but allow it to show the raw data
while simultaneously letting RATING WMP or whatever work as it does now.

Right click on the song and select show extended tags. This will show all information unless the file information was corrupted by another software. Also, check to see if you have IDE and ape checked in mp3 tags options, APE tags for MP3's is usually to the source to any problems with changing tag information... I prefer to unslelect write ape for mp3 and only check remove ape for mp3 and make sure read ape tags is selected... a common program called MP3Gain is usually the culprit for downloaded music containing APE tags.

Just saw how old the original post was... This issue is now irrelevant.

I'm not sure who you are addressing, but extended tags does not show all information in some cases, especially with ratings.