9 songs flipped:

Using the strategy detailed yesterday, I targeted FF 12 because it had too many good songs, not because it had too few.  This let me discover 6 FF 12 songs that really weren't 5-star material, but were simply camouflaged as good because they had so many good neighbors.

In their place I promoted 3 Legaia Duel Saga songs -- 'Advancing to Far Away Places,' 'Wasteland of Far Away Places,' and 'Inaccessible Road,' two of which have been 5-star before.  I also added three real newcomers -- 'Nai Nai' from Shadows House, 'Venice Rooftops' from Soul Calibur 5 and 'Stepping' from Ogre Battle 64.

For 'Nai Nai' I did the same trick as 'Way to Go,' by cutting the song short I improved it drastically, which let it reach 5-star status when before it wasn't.  The Soul Calibur song is actually from Assassin's Creed but I have the Soul Calibur version so Soul Calibur it is.

I used a clever trick to figure out who to promote as well.  First I listened to all the 4-star songs I thought had potential and were likely good enough.  Then I listened to the FF 12 5-star songs, and every time I thought, 'the 4-star song I heard earlier was better than this,' boom, I got a pair to flip.  By keeping all the songs' relative worths in my short term memory I was able to accurately compare the two.

I also gave up on 'Brian Boru's March', 'Jellyfish' and 'Rae-bel Tableland' and demoted them back to 4-star, preferring 'A push on the back' from Octopath Traveler II, 'Temptation Waits' by Garbage and 'Kirei na Kanjou' from Noir.

Due to songs being demoted and then promoted back up again, not as many songs have actually switched places as it looks on a day-to-day view.  In all about 125 songs have actually flipped from 5-star to 4-star in the past year or two.  That's over 10% so quite a lot, but hardly Armageddon.  Most of the music I thought was good originally really was good.  But you can be amazed how important it is to eliminate that lowest 10%, it tends to drag down the quality of the entire product.  Try winning a game of Magic with 10% of your cards sub-par and the other 90% perfect.  There's an oversized effect in terms of happiness when not a single unwelcome song ever plays.

There aren't any songs I feel the urgent need to promote from the 4-star tier anymore, so maybe this project is now finally complete.  It would be nice to finish before I ran out of Sword of Truth books to read. . .

As usual all the details can be found in my music permapost.