Now Mac users can “clean” songs with TuneUp

December 11, 2008 | Anthony Ha | Comments | |

TuneUp, the iTunes plugin that cleans up your music tracks by supplying the correct song information and art, is now available for Mac.

It’s a pretty cool idea — by taking a song’s “audio fingerprint,” TuneUp can fill in any missing or incorrect information, as well as provide the cover art. After installation, all users have to do is drag problematic songs into the TuneUp sidebar that appears in iTunes.

This would have been much more useful for me when I was still transferring songs from my CD collection; I had to do a lot of typing to fill-in “Track 1″s and “Unknown Artist”s. Now, however, I buy all my music online, so this isn’t really a problem. Still, it was great to add cover art to many of my old MP3s with the click of a button. TuneUp also displays local concert listings for the musicians in your collection.

When the service launched in July, we complained that Mac users had to to be patient, so it’s good to see the wait is over. TuneUp says it has already cleaned up 25 million songs. I’m still wondering about the San Francisco startup’s business model, however. There’s a free version that will clean up to 500 tracks and supply up to 50 cover images, then you have to pay either a $19.95 one-time fee or an $11.95 subscription. Is this useful enough that people will hand over even a relatively small amount of cash for it? I’m not completely convinced.

Also: Is there something in the air motivating PC-only services to launch their Mac versions this week?

Update: A competitor called FixTunes is offering a discount to VentureBeat readers in the comments below.

Next Story: Former Intel Classmate PC executive takes his cause to NComputing
Previous Story: InnerRewards raises $1M for online wellness community

Bookmark and Share

Tags:

Photo of Anthony Ha

About the Author, Anthony Ha

Anthony is VentureBeat's assistant editor, as well as its reporter on enterprise technology, cloud computing, and tech policy. Before joining VentureBeat in 2008, Anthony worked at the Hollister Free Lance, where he won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for breaking news coverage and writing. He attended Stanford University and now lives in San Francisco. Reach him at anthony@venturebeat.com. You can also follow Anthony on Twitter.

  • It's great to see others working on this problem. Check out http://www.fixtunes.com We've been developing software for cleaning music libraries for several years - working to make the program both more accurate and easy to use (not a simple problem).

    FixTunes has had both a Mac and Windows version for a while as well as a non-iTunes version (since not everyone loves that program).

    I've created a discount code: "VENTUREBEAT", that will make the program free for the first 100 people that use it. It's normally $25. Just go to the purchase page and enter that code. And feel free to email us with any feedback (kelly@fixtunes.com).

    Thanks! And good luck to TuneUp. (I like their local concerts feature. That's cool.)
  • Thanks Kelly! I've updated the post to point out the discount code.
  • mike
    Very buggy. Crashed my Mac.
  • mike
    Erased TuneUp app. Now when I open Itunes, I get a window that says "Where is Tuneup?" It's like being back on Windows! Thanks guys. This app sucks. Don't download.
  • mike
    Sorry for the multiple posts, but this thing is wreaking havoc on my Mac. Never had this kind of Windows-like bugginess in two years. Itunes is messed up. Computer is slowing down. Seriously, don't download this app. Terrible.
  • mike
    Anthony, what are you thinking? This thing is like a virus. It launches automatically when you open Itunes. Half the time when you try to close it, it freezes the computer. There's literally no uninstall script! If you drag the app to the trash, Itunes won't function anymore. This app is NOT ready for use. I'm pissed.
  • Hmm, well, I haven't had any freezing problems. Hadn't tried to uninstall yet, but I guess you're right about the lack of an obvious method -- what a drag. I'm checking to see what the company has to say and will either post a comment with their response or update the post itself.

    By the way, Mike, if you've got a Disqus account you can edit existing comments. So if you think of extra stuff to say you don't have to write four separate comments. No big deal, just a thought.
  • mike
    I went to their support pages where they tell you that there's some manual uninstall instructions, but you have to email them to receive the information. Why?

    Anyway, I emailed support, and got the instructions below. This takes you through a manual uninstall process where you have to select whether or not to uninstall various files and frameworks. Obviously not consumer friendly. Never, ever seen a mac application require this process. I did the uninstall and it appears to have worked, although I wasn't sure whether or not to uninstall some of the more generic sounding frameworks. Hopefully they fix up these bugs and release a proper Mac version in the future. This was just a premature public launch.

    If you'd still like to uninstall TuneUp, the uninstaller is available at
    the following location:

    /Users/yourusername/Library/Logs/TuneUp Uninstaller.app

    Please note that this uninstaller will NOT work on beta installations.
  • Gabe Adiv here, CEO of TuneUp.

    First off, thanks to Venture Beat for the coverage.

    To address some of your comments:

    @mike – Truly sorry to hear that you’ve had issues with TuneUp. We thoroughly tested TuneUp for Mac for months leading up today and we haven’t had any feedback like this from any of our beta testers. There is an uninstaller which is located under: /Users/"YourUserName"/Library/Logs/TuneUp Uninstaller.app or you can just spotlight "TuneUp Uninstaller"

    Launching this uninstaller should resolve any issues that you're having.

    @ Anthony - see above for uninstaller instructions. We're getting a lot of good feedback from users today that we'll work to update quickly in future releases including a more obvious uninstaller and preferences pane (currently you right click on TuneUp to access the preferences pane).

    Finally, for anyone who'd like to give us feedback or needs help getting up and running, please contact me directly at GabeA AT tuneupmedia DOT com and we will get back to you ASAP. Your feedback is really important as we’re constantly looking to improve our product.
  • Great, thanks Gabe.