Cult of Mac Favorite: TuneUp (iTunes Add-On)

11:50 pm, May 21st, 2009, Leander Kahney

tuneup_screenshot

What it is: An iTunes add-on for cleaning mislabeled tracks, downloading art and finding music videos, concert info and artist bios.

Why it’s good: After years of downloading weird crap off the internet, my iTunes library is a swamp of mislabeled and unidentified tracks, and I’m sick of it. So I downloaded TuneUp — and I’m in love. TuneUp handily cleaned up a bunch of mislabeled tracks using the Gracenote database (which uses the track’s “audio fingerprint” to identify it). Cleaning takes a few seconds per track and was about 70-80 percent effective on my odd library (British punk, post-punk and lots of electronica). Previous track cleaners I’ve tried have been useless. But it’s the extra artist info via the Net that I’m really digging. TuneUp sits to the side of the iTunes window and displays all kinds of artist info: Wikipedia bios, Google News stories, music recommendations, upcoming concerts and YouTube videos, which I’ve wasted hours watching. The information is truly useful, fascinating, appropriate and timely. Apple thinks so too. TuneUp was added to the shelves of Apple’s retail stores this week — a rare honor granted only to tip top software.

Where to get it: TuneUp is available as a free download with 100 cleans and 50 album covers. Full version costs $29.95 (or $19.95 for an annual subscription),

NOTE: Use CULTOFMAC activation code to get a 15% discount.

Posted by Leander Kahney in Favorites, Music, Software, iTunes | Comment on this article

About the author

Leander Kahney is senior editor of Cult of Mac, editor of two books about technology culture, Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, and has written for Wired, MacWeek, Scientific American, and The Observer in London. Follow Leander on Twitter @lkahney and Facebook.

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9 comments

Gabe Adiv here, CEO of TuneUp.

Thanks so much for the write-up and so glad you’re in love! It’s a wonderful feeling, isn’t it?

Please let us know if you or your readers have any questions.

Gabe Adiv, on May 22nd, 2009 at 12:26 am

There are few applications that I am happy to pay for:
-ChronoSync
-Simplify Media V2.0

TuneUp is the App from 2008 that blew me away. It took what “iEatBrainz” wanted to do and did it perfectly. I gave TuneUp to all my iTunes obsessed friends for christmas last year and recommend it to someone at least once a week.

I have >40,000 songs of varying copyright status in my iTunes library, before TuneUp the vast majority were mislabeled, missing artwork, and had no album. I now only have ~1000 songs missing data and most of them are concert bootlegs I recorded myself.

NOTE: If you have a small library (<2000) you can get away with using just the demo, of 2000 <500 should need cleaning so you’ll be good and not have to buy it.

Sam, on May 22nd, 2009 at 2:23 am

Now that they have cleaned up the interface I am really in love with Tuneup. I was going nuts trying to tag my 13,000 + songs.

Still has trouble with some of the obscure music (it gave Jerry Reed an album cover from some Japanese movie and wouldn’t let me pick something else) but I am 99% very happy with this program, it should have been a part of iTunes from the get-go.

fuzzy, on May 22nd, 2009 at 3:12 am

No link to the software? :-S

Jorge, on May 22nd, 2009 at 4:35 am

I hate iTunes, but software like this helps. And thanks for the discount.

BTW, I couldn’t find a link to the site in this post to give you credit for their traffic.

tayker, on May 22nd, 2009 at 5:31 am

I tried this, it does not work well at all. But then again, I do not listen to mainstream music. Great if you like raidohead or Jay-Z but useless if you tastes are outside the herd.
It missed all but 9 of the 100 demo songs for tagging. Pathetic.

It’s also very buggy and crashed all the time. I had to uninstall it and itunes to get my system back to normal.

A lot of other apps do the same thing a lot better and they are free.

dajebus, on May 22nd, 2009 at 6:59 am

Getting mixed results so far. If you play the song that TuneUp has chosen as a match within TuneUp, it just plays the original track from iTunes. How are you supposed to test whether TuneUp has picked the right track? I’ve tested with some obscure old Detroit techno tracks, and the only matches that made sense were from newer House compilations. I want references to the original 12″ vinyl release. Asking too much I guess…

KurtO, on May 22nd, 2009 at 7:30 am

@Jorge. Oops, my bad. here it is: http://www.tuneupmedia.com/
and i added it to the post. thanks for the reminder.

Leander Kahney, on May 22nd, 2009 at 7:49 am

Thanks for the app tip — trying it out now. So far, it’s missing more than it’s helping…. we’ll see!

I do love when you guys highlight apps that I’d have never found otherwise.

The Idiot, on May 22nd, 2009 at 8:25 am