Siri appears to have lost the ability to carry out requests to rate songs played in the Apple Music app in iOS 15 and later, based on user reports and tests conducted by MacRumors.
When listening to a song from your music library on iPhone and iPad, it used to be possible to ask Siri to "rate this song five [or whatever number] stars," and the virtual assistant would do so without fuss.
This ability to rate songs in the Apple Music app with Siri was introduced way back in iOS 8. Listeners usually rely on the function to give songs in their library a rating when they're listening handsfree via CarPlay, exercising while wearing AirPods, or making smart playlists based on ratings.
Yet reports on Reddit, Apple Support Communities, and the MacRumors forums suggest that the function is not available in iOS 15 or iOS 15.1, and has remained out of action in the latest iOS 15.2 point release, issued in December. Instead of carrying out the request, Siri responds with "I'm Sorry, I'm afraid I can't do that," or some variation thereof.
It's unclear if this is an intended change by Apple, or an intermittent server-side problem that has arisen since the release of iOS 15, but it's worth noting that iOS 15 and iOS 15.2 both made functional changes to Siri, in relation to Apple Music interoperability and more generally at the system level.
In iOS 15, Apple made changes to Siri so that some requests are handled without an internet connection, for faster query recognition when doing things like opening apps and setting alarms and timers. Then, in iOS 15.2, the company introduced a new Apple Music Voice Plan that exclusively relies on Siri for music playback and user interaction.
Whether either of these changes are behind Siri's inability to rate songs on request is unknown at this time, but we've reached out to Apple for more information and will pass on any clarifying details if we do hear back.