Software
Thats why hundreds of songs in my iTunes library are missing the proper album artwork or have been lumped into loosely defined categories that dont truly describe the music genre.
For instance, iTunes automated identification system believes that some songs by the B-52s, the Jimi Hendrix Experience and the Byrds all belong in the generic rock section. But these birds dont really flock together, do they?
If youre picky about music descriptions and want to find album artwork that iTunes doesnt have, it might be time to get a little help from a software program promising to fill the gaps in digital music collections.
I turned to TuneUp, a plug-in application that competes against a similar program called FixTunes.
Drawing upon a database of 90 million songs, TuneUp can pore through thousands of tracks in iTunes within a few minutes to identify problems and offer solutions. It works on Macs and computers running Windows.
Unfortunately, the help isnt free: TuneUp charges $20 for a one-year subscription to its service or $30 for lifetime access. Thats an increase from a recent one-time fee of $20 or a one-year subscription of $12, an indication that demand for TuneUp may be rising.
The product probably is probably worth the money for people like me who already had large CD collections before buying their first iPod. Once I got a portable player, all those CDs had to be ripped on to a computer.
When trying to identify an incoming CD transfer, iTunes relies on a database from Gracenote – the same source that steers TuneUp. But TuneUp has access to a much larger and more sophisticated database than iTunes does, enabling the service to do a deeper analysis of each song. And TuneUp has built up its own digital warehouse of album covers, allowing it to find artwork that iTunes doesnt.
The artwork feature is by far the coolest thing about TuneUp. The software found new images for 346 songs, or about 7 percent of my iTunes library.
I was particularly please to fetch missing artwork for albums like “Blind Faith,” “Soul Hits of the 70s: Didnt It Blow Your Mind,” “Bruce Springsteen: The Classic Interviews,” and “The Beavis and Butthead Experience,” as well as soundtracks like “Swingers,” “National Lampoons Animal House,” and “The Sopranos.” (Who wouldnt want Tonys menacing scowl on their iPod?)
Although it improved upon what I had, TuneUp still couldnt get some things right. For some reason, it determined that the Bill Withers song “Lean on Me” should be associated with the album artwork tied to a 1985 single called “Oh Yeah!” (I ripped the Withers song from part of the “Soul Hits of the 70s” collection).
And, like iTunes, the program couldnt figure out that I had imported most of my vast Led Zeppelin collection from the groups epic box set. TuneUp, like iTunes, wanted to do things like stamp the cover from Led Zeppelin IV (yes, the one with “Stairway to Heaven”) on songs from disc four of the box set.
I still found reason to nitpick with some of TuneUps definitions. For instance, I liked the way TuneUp classified The Rolling Stones 1972 classic album “Exile on Main Street” as “Blues, Boogie and Southern Rock,” but does the groups “Bridges to Babylon” really belong in the same category as “Exile”? Bridges sounds more like “A Bigger Bang,” which TuneUp defined as “AOR (shorthand for Album Oriented Rock) Classic Rock.”
While it tidies up your music, TuneUp also can help you find videos, concert tickets and merchandise for any artist in your library. When I was playing “Magnificent” from U2s latest album, TuneUp quickly linked to a recent video of the band performing the same song on David Lettermans show. And when I was listening to The Beatles, the software alerted me to a tribute bands upcoming show in San Francisco.
But TuneUp also made some puzzling suggestions. When I was listening to Bob Dylans “Tangled Up in Blue,” the software recommended buying Norman Greenbaums “Spirit In The Sky” and Joan Jetts “Bad Reputation.”
I couldnt but thinking that if this was really smart software it would have already realized I had those songs in my iTunes library.