Hm, good points. It turns out play_count is specified as an unsigned short, and skipped_count is specified as an unsigned int. If this was implemented such that the player's attempts to write to this field were blocked, neither it nor emplode should care about what's there, and emphatic (and jEmplode, eventually) could interpret it as signed. Only experimentation will prove this out. I'll give the +/- approach a shot and see where it gets me.