CNET Editors' review
TuneUp is an iTunes plug-in for Windows users which helps you analyze, clean up, and correct track tagging SNAFUs in a fraction of the time it would take to do them manually. The interface shows up to the right of your iTunes music library with features for cleaning tags, finding album artwork, getting more artist info, and genre-related recommendations from Amazon. You can also search local concert listings on StubHub for bands in your library.
The Clean tool takes an audio fingerprint of a mislabeled song, matches it against Gracenote's Global Media Database of more than 90 million songs, and returns most likely matches which you can save to your library. It even recognizes songs from the same album so you can get both music and cover art in one pass. In our testing, it worked almost flawlessly as long as we only chose groups of 50 songs at a time, but simply selecting the entire library and trying to clean it all brought the program to a crawl. The Cover Art tool quickly offered covers for every artist it recognized, and the Now Playing section offered up music videos for the artist playing, all accessible with a click of a button.
TuneUp Companion isn't perfect, but it's a good start. As a beta release, there are still bugs to be ironed out, and a Mac client is due soon. The trial version offers 500 "cleans" and 50 cover art "finds"--not nearly enough for most libraries. An unlimited version of TuneUp Companion costs $19.95 for a one-time charge or you can get an annual subscription for $11.95.
Publisher's Description
From TuneUp Media:
TuneUp is the must-have plug-in for iTunes and Windows Media Player that lets you manage, organize and discover your music library like never before. TuneUp uses cutting-edge acoustic fingerprinting technology to intelligently fix mislabeled song info (like "Track 01" and "Unknown Artist"), fill in missing album artwork and remove duplicate songs. Explore your world of music with Tuniverse, which offers personalized concert alerts, music videos, artist bios and seamless social media integration.
What's new in this version: Version 2.2.5 includes a variety of performance and stability enhancements, including a fix for the iTunes 10.5 compatibility bug.
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All versions:
2.9 starsout of 184 votes
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Current version:
2.8 starsout of 29 votes
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My rating:
Write review
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"GARBAGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Version: TuneUp 2.2.5
Pros
none nada zilch
Cons
everything
Summary
since the recent upgrade nothing works. and the deduper has never worked
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"Love my new library"
Version: TuneUp 2.2.5
Pros
Read the description, this app does everything it claims to do...as they say, "automagically".
Cons
costs $40 smackers, which to me is a lot to throw down for an app
Summary
My iTunes library had gotten to a point where I was hardly even using it. I've been adding songs to my library for 6 years. Several of those years were during the peak "song sharing" days. Which meant my tracks were a hodge podge of unlabeled and mis-labeled songs. This was fine back in the day of using your library to "burn" CD's. Now that I am solely listening to music on my iPod (be it through headphones, or aux chord in my car) I was left with a library that was completely unkept and useless. I couldn't just shuffle through songs because it was impossible to find the songs that I once loved since they weren't labeled. TuneUp labeled all my music so now I can search for what I am after and find it without having to sift though thousands of songs labeled Track 1rs543sesr or whatever random title they had acquired. I don't know any coding tricks, and I definitely didn't have the time to label by hand so TuneUp was a God send.
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"One of a kind"
Version: TuneUp 2.2.5
Pros
No other program like it.
It completely makes over your iTunes Library.
Adds cover art
De-duplicates
Labels tracks.Cons
It will crash if you dump a large library in all at once. You are better off segmenting to avoid having to force quit.
Summary
Cleaning your library by hand means listening to each song, figuring out the name, looking up the artist, then typing in all the information. If you have more than say 20 songs that need to be properly labeled that will take you hours. Not to mention I don't even know how you would begin to add cover art. If you aren't a coding wizard and can figure out a solution to do this on your own, TuneUp is the option for you. It may have it's flaws but it beats taking hours of time to do this by hand.
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"Shouldn't waste your money..."
Version: TuneUp 2.2.5
Pros
Extra's are nice, but there is free code to do the same functions.
Cons
Cost; should be free!
Summary
Free code to remove duplicates....
var ITTrackKindFile = 1;
var iTunesApp = WScript.CreateObject("iTunes.Application");
var usedNames = new Array();
var usedArtists = new Array();
var deletedTracks = 0;
var mainLibrary = iTunesApp.LibraryPlaylist;
var tracks = mainLibrary.Tracks;
var numTracks = tracks.Count;
var i;
var j;
var currTrackName;
var found = 0;
while (numTracks != 0)
{
var currTrack = tracks.Item(numTracks);
// is this a file track?
if (currTrack.Kind == ITTrackKindFile)
{
found = 0;
currTrackName = currTrack.Name;
currTrackArtist = currTrack.Artist;
for (j = 0; j < usedNames.length; j++)
{
if (found == 0) {
if ((currTrack.Name == usedNames[j]) && (currTrack.Artist == usedArtists[j]))
{
//Track Name Used.
currTrack.Delete();
found = 1;
deletedTracks++;
}
} else {
break;
}
}
// It survived.
usedNames.push(currTrackName);
usedArtists.push(currTrackArtist);
}
numTracks--;
}
if (deletedTracks > 0)
{
if (deletedTracks == 1)
{
WScript.Echo("Removed 1 duplicate track.");
}
else
{
WScript.Echo("Removed " + deletedTracks + " duplicate tracks.");
}
}
else
{
WScript.Echo("No duplicate tracks were found.");
} -
"Works, most of the time... Buggy, sometimes hangs."
Version: TuneUp 2.2.5
Pros
I have a pretty big library, and many of them are Asian songs (Japanese, Korean, Chinese). It found and cleaned almost all of them. Most of the time works pretty fast.
Cons
Buggy... Sometimes says there is no Internet connection when I can connect fine. Stops responding every now and then, I have to Force Quit. The latest update brought a new feature called DeDuper. However, even though I am a Gold subscriber, I am forced to pay for this feature again. The license says what I paid for includes future updates too. What's the meaning of "Gold" then?
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"Problem Free in Small Doses"
Version: TuneUp 2.2.5
Pros
It will do what it claims to do, i.e. get rid of duplicates, label songs, add cover art.
Cons
If you want it to do all these things and not take a year to finish it, you need to break you library down into manageable "batches" like 50-100 songs at a time. Otherwise your computer is going to be running at a snails pace for hours and very likely the program will crash.
Summary
If you have had a negative experience with TuneUp I suggest breaking it into smaller chunks and giving it one more try. This is what I did and I got the results from it I wanted.
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"Worked Surprisingly Well"
Version: TuneUp 2.2.5
Pros
I've got a bunch of downloaded music in my library that I didn't get from iTunes. My library had gotten so bad that I couldn't really find any of my songs. If I played it on shuffle I'd end up having to get up or stop what I was doing to skip through Christmas music or whatever almost every song making my library pretty much a dump. TuneUp went in and labeled all of my songs. I don't care about the cover art, and I didn't really need the de-dupe thing, but for labeling it was awesome.
Cons
Messed up a few songs, but I would say less than 5-10%
Summary
If you are lazy and getting tired of never being able to find the songs you are after this is the application for you.
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"total garbage."
Version: TuneUp 2.2.5
Pros
so far it fixed about 5 mislabeled albums.
Cons
cost money, not very effective with spotty internet connection. very buggy.
Summary
overall not a very good program for windows media.
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""Beware of "Lifetime" purchase!""
Version: TuneUp 2.2.5
Pros
Fixes names of tracks and artists
But very slow?Cons
Often finds misinformation and especially incorrect artwork.
Paid for a "Lifetime" subscription but with the last upgrade they are now charging more for their "new" De-Duper (a feature that was already included). A classic Bait and Switch scam.Summary
I made the mistake of buying this program. Sure, it cleaned up the track names and made the artists naming convention consistent, but that is all. Even when changing the settings to avoid compilation's, this thing tagged probably 30-50% of tracks to compilations. I could live with the artists own compilations, but it regularly tagged tracks to random compilations like "Hits of the 80s," etc. I would say more often than not the album tagged was not the album the song originally was released on. For example, almost every Beatles song was tagged to some junky aftermarket Beatles compilation. The artwork....what a joke! At least 50% of the time the artwork is wrong, or the resolution is so poor you are better off without it. After trying this program for the artists A-D on my iTunes, I abandoned it. By the way, it does not run nearly as fast as advertised. Each 1000 songs would take 4-5 hours. I ended up just running it for my main playlist of about 1,500 songs, and now I am still spending hours fixing poor album choices and awful artwork.
Unless you just want to fix track titles and clean-up artists names, save your money. -
"Terrible Program - Do NOT Buy"
Version: TuneUp 2.2.5
Pros
No other program like it.
Cons
Crashes often.
Rarely finds songs.
Always errors with installing/updating.
ALWAYS messes up during the cleaning process of a song, the artwork will be wrong or it will make your songs all Chinese titles etc.. when they are popular songs by artists like Bruno Mars or Adele.Summary
Don't buy this program, it's a waste of money.
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