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Beta beat: TuneUp plugin gets your iTunes straightened out

The MP3 is an astonishing invention; who would have thought, in the days of LPs and 8-track tapes, that someday you could keep a houseful of albums on a gadget the size of a Zippo? Unfortunately, with power and convenience comes managerial effort and housekeeping chaos -- duped files, missing cover art, and overall aggravation. Keeping your music clean and neat can seem like a full-time job.

I've long relied on Chaotic's vintage and versatile MP3 Rage (now Media Rage 3, $30) utility for organizing my music, and it does fine (although it can't resolve the one big issue I still have -- a smattering of very old MP2 files that need to be converted to MP3 or AAC before syncing to an iPod, and there's no good way to search for them... rrgh) but I'd love to have a plugin for iTunes that could handle some of the same chores.

It turns out, there already is such a plugin, but (silly Mac user!) I didn't know about it because it's only available in the Windows version of iTunes. TuneUp will happily sit in the iTunes sidebar and kick into gear on request, cleaning your song filenames, adding album art, pointing out concert dates and YouTube videos for your favorite artists, and more. The tool comes in a free version (limited to 50 art downloads and 500 file cleanups) or a paid Gold version ($12 US annual subscription or $20 lifetime license) with unlimited art and cleaning power.

If only there was a Mac version... ah, there's the fun part. The Mac beta for TuneUp will be starting shortly, and we can help you move to the front of the line. Send an email to with your full name as the only thing on the first line of the email -- the first 100 respondents will be automatically added to the beta list.

Happy cleaning!



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Software iTunes Beta Beat

The MP3 is an astonishing invention; who would have thought, in the days of LPs and 8-track tapes, that someday you could keep a houseful...
 

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justin

Sign me up for the beta please

October 27 2008 at 10:31 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
dani

would love a beta invite also, been on the beta list for a few months now except i have yet to receive an invite :(

October 26 2008 at 10:29 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Devin

Does it do genre? And if so, is there a way to tell it to only do genre? I've always kept all my artist, title, album, track, album art, etc in line, but I've never dealt with genre. I'd even be willing to do it manually, if I knew a good place to find genre. I tried Wikipedia, except sometimes they list more than one genre, which doesn't work that well for iTunes, where you only give a track one genre.

October 25 2008 at 6:22 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Devin's comment
albinoGrackle

Sign me up for the beta, too. My collection is a mess!!!

October 26 2008 at 4:40 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Darren

I would love a beta invite. This is just what I've been looking for.

October 25 2008 at 4:14 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
dave

Here's a fun plug-in called sideTunes. www.nutsie.com/sidetunes

(Windows iTunes only though)

October 25 2008 at 10:37 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
vinniev

This would be a godsend to many! Lemme try it :)

October 25 2008 at 9:43 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Steve

I would love to try it as well.

October 25 2008 at 7:49 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Todd

Love to help make it even better for the Mac...Count me in please.

October 25 2008 at 1:18 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
rich

I've used the windows version of this program- it crashed a lot, and didn't do a very good job of dealing with my 120G of CD rips. Lots of wrong album covers and other tagging errors.

They also signed me up for an automatic annual renewal via paypal - I didn't expect or welcome that.

October 24 2008 at 7:44 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to rich's comment
Gabe Adiv

@Rich- Gabe Adiv here, CEO of TuneUp.


First of all, thanks for taking time time to try TuneUp for PC. Sorry to hear that you had issues with the application. WOuld be great if you could let us know which version of TuneUp you're running. We generally don't have issues with TuneUp crashing, so we take issues like this pretty seriously.

In terms of TuneUp not finding the right tags and album art for your music, I would recommend making sure that you have the right metadata in your library before you run Cover Art. TuneUp's not able to pull the right cover art unless the metadata is close to correct. We're at 95% accuracy with Cover Art, provided that at least some of the id3 tags are correct.

Finally, giving users the option to opt out of automatic renewals is definitely in the works. Apologies on the oversight on that. By the time it comes time for you to renew, you'll have plenty of time to avoid automatic payment.

Many Thanks,

The TuneUp Team

October 26 2008 at 1:42 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Tom

Beta me also, please!

October 24 2008 at 7:19 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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