TuneUp for iTunes
Unplggd Test Labs

Product: TuneUp Digital Music Management and Music Discovery for iTunes
Price: Free to try, $19.95 (Yearly License) or $29.95 (Lifetime License)
Rating: Recommend*

Our iTunes music library is pretty much a mess. No cover art. Untagged songs as far as we can see. Oh, TuneUp, will you be the one to save our music collection so we can stop being the laughing stock at our fancy dinner parties?

If you're like us, you've accumulated quite the collection over the years. We grew up in the days of Napster, stumbled on AudioGalaxy, and finally settled on iTunes as our primary organizer of our music. As a result from all these transitions, our music collection is a mess. Tunes are mislabeled with incorrect titles, with wrong "The's" in front of band names, and many without any ID3 tags at all. What a mess. This is where clever tools like TuneUp come in.

Basically, it works like this: TuneUp grabs your library's metadata and nabs missing info from Gracenote's Global Media Database. Then it provides you with the appropriate album art, song titles, and even a contextually aware suggestion tab giving you music videos, band info, and concerts in your local area. If you love music as much as we do, TuneUp's an excellent way to keep up to date via an application interface without having to stray too far away from your iTunes collection.

As for the installation, we have no complaints here. A quick run through our messed up music collection and we ran the numbers. What we got was an 85% success rate. Not too shabby. Heck, after a while, we found it kind of fun... you know, cleaning up our music collection and all. It's the same feeling you get when you shie up your iPhone from the day's smudges. Who would've thought one can get kicks out of something like this?

A few little things that bugged us were 1) the menu bar icon didn't have an alternative dock icon to fit in with the rest of the icons (yeah, we're a bit obsessive), 2) the preferences icon does not make any sense (... <- Yeah, that's the icon), and finally, 3) (Which gets its own paragraph!)...

We're normally not one to suggest a different monetizing model, but there are sites out there like Hype Machine and Last.FM who have similar means of acquiring info on bands and exploring new music for free. Winamp (for PC) also features auto-tagging options for, guess what, free. Having to cough up a few extra bucks a year for information seems a little steep in this day in age. We understand what you're primarily paying for is the "Cleaning" feature, but why not just charge users that buy tickets through your local concerts tab as support? Also, since it appears TuneUp is already providing means to quickly buy music through the suggestions tab, wouldn't having more users utilize your program mean money in the long run?

But perhaps that's just all nitpicking on our part. TuneUp is a great concept that we really, really love. While it seems to work only 85% of the time, there's no doubt in our mind that it's better than nothing. No longer shall we feel ashamed when throwing up our music on Plex on the big screen only get gain comments from friends like, "Man, you really got that iTunes collection in order, don't you?" And we'll respond, "Oh, yeah. I'm just that kind of guy." (Or girl).

Pros: Fun to use. Pretty darn accurate. Easy to navigate.
Cons: A couple questionable UI design decisions. Somewhat steep price for information.

Our Ratings:
Strong Recommend
Recommend*
Weak Recommend
Don't Recommend

Comments (9)

I've always been maniacal about downloading art for iTunes, then someone suggested it just eats up valuable space on my iPod Touch. Is that true?

@Daesu: It is true. iTunes handles album art by adding it as part of the mp3 itself. So adding album art will add a little bit size to your mp3. Not much for you to notice the difference, but if you have 10k songs, it adds up. Still, personally, I don't really think its enough to go and delete album art. The enjoyment I get from seeing it far out ways the few extra mbs it eats up.

Thanks for the advice, Jose A -- I'll keep my album art. (It just looks so bloody good!)

This is a great example of one of my biggest mac gripes. Tons of programs that have free equivalents (though not as slick) are paid software, or shareware with lots of nag screens. It's maddening just how little freeware there is for macs.

If this saves me from having to boot into Windows and manually editing tags with Mp3tag, I may consider giving this program a go. However, I do wish the pricing was more in line with their free alternative competitors. Not saying it should be free, but $30 for a lifetime license seems to be a bit high for what you're getting.

I have a ton of Classical & foreign language titles - small batch, 1980's discs by obsucre composers, on obsolete labels- I wonder if this is more "popular music"-centric.

Protip, if you look around, and/or download the demo and are patient, they semi often have sales of 20% off. One just ended after new years, but I had seen them a few times before then.

It's a pretty good program... the windows version chugs a bit imo, but then again, that could be iTunes.

With the discount, it's not too bad. I really wish it would stop crashing on my mac whenever I don't have an internet connection though. That's really annoying..

update: It was able to ID, much to my surprise, a great majority of my titles. "Catharine Crozier plays Organ Music of Leo Sowerby" - no problemo for TuneUP, complete with cover art. I found things in my ITunes that I had completely forgotten about. I highly recommend this.