Filed under: Audio, Utilities, Windows, Macintosh, Productivity
TidySongs cleans up your messy music library
by Jay Hathaway Aug 5th 2009 at 11:00AM
If you're at all like me, your iTunes library is a complete mess. I'm plagued by duplicate songs, missing artwork, and so many different genres that they're completely useless. It's an absolute pain to fix manually, so I assume it's never going to get done. Unless I get TidySongs, anyway. TidySongs is a typing-free way to clear up all the issues with your iTunes library, even if some of your songs and artists are woefully misspelled.TidySongs checks against a database to find duplicates and get the correct album artwork, whether you've got the names of your songs right or not. It handles genres by giving you a list of the ones you have, and allowing you to rename and consolidate them so that they might actually be useful. TidySongs also fills in details like album titles and years. It's not that blunt an instrument, though: you can choose to run it only on specific songs or song details.
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The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Drew said 7:45PM on 8-05-2009
How does this program compare to the godfather? Anyone?
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snoopedgyedge said 11:25AM on 8-05-2009
Must have iTunes to use this. You're out of luck if you use Songbird, Zune, Winamp, etc.
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Kelly said 11:40AM on 8-05-2009
Thank you for telling your users about us Jay! We want to help you add all the missing details to your songs. I created a discount code for your readers. The first 25 readers to purchase TidySongs will get 25% off.
Discount code: "downloadsquad"
Send me an email at kelly [at] tidysongs [dot] com if you have any questions or feedback for us!
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Alex M said 11:45AM on 8-05-2009
I use EasyTag (http://easytag.sourceforge.net/). It doesn't hold your hand if you're a complete newbie, but if you get the hang of its Scanner, it's pretty powerful.
If you have structured folders, "Fill Tag" scanner will populate the tags.
If you have tags but no structure, "Rename File and Folder" scanner will move the files around.
I found out about this program browsing the Ubuntu repos almost two years ago, and haven't looked back since.
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anonymoose said 11:49AM on 8-05-2009
And this differs to http://www.tuneupmedia.com/ how?
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Jon said 11:58AM on 8-05-2009
I Use Media Monkey for Tag cleanup and Cover art
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Kelly said 12:44PM on 8-05-2009
@anonymoose
In addition to the other fixing features, TidySongs has an automatic duplicate-finder and eliminator, and a tool for renaming genre tags to make them more consistent.
Paul Taylor from the Financial Times did a comparison of the two programs in his review called Tidy Your iTunes Library: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/96f49fe6-77eb-11de-9713-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1
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sidewinder12s said 2:32PM on 8-05-2009
I tired it and it works really well, I just think that $30 is a little much to be asking for this type of thing. Since there are so many other free ones out there. Maybe $10 at the most.
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kemeng said 2:40PM on 8-05-2009
http://www.beatunes.com/
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iGate said 5:54PM on 8-05-2009
i have a problem with this.
there are songs which i know the track info to be correct, yet TidySongs suggests something else at 33% confidence. i then request it to relook, and it comes back with the same suggestion at 99% confidence. i find that pointless as the whole reason i told it to relook was because i knew it was wrong.
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Mike said 9:43PM on 8-05-2009
Just used meta-pod to fix my iTunes library after moving to a network drive didn't go perfectly.
Automatically detected and easily fixed the 900+ files that were in my library but not in the proper location.
Free and fixed things for me.
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Mike said 9:45PM on 8-05-2009
Sorry mispelled, it's meta-ipod I was referring to.
Brandon L said 9:39PM on 8-09-2009
Is there any way to download this without using Adobe Air? It keeps crashing on me and won't allow me to complete the install.
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Kelly said 3:13PM on 8-10-2009
@Brandon L Right now Adobe Air is required.