Filed under: Audio, Utilities, Macintosh
Song Sergeant whips your music library into shape
by Jay Hathaway Aug 21st 2009 at 4:00PM
If you don't make any manual decisions, and just let Song Sergeant make every change it suggests, your library will probably end up significantly tidier than before. Where Song Sergeant really shines is in the details, though, like the clever way it handles duplicates. Song Sergeant treats song metadata and audio separately, so when you have a duplicate, you can keep the audio from one file and the song info from the other.
I was quite happy to apply Song Sergeant's fixes for inconsistently-named songs, albums and artists. When there's a conflict - I had both "Eels" and "The Eels" in my lbrary, for example - Song Sergeant suggests which version of the name is probably correct, and does a pretty good job of it. Out of 30-ish inconsistencies in my library, it only picked the wrong version once. Although Song Sergeant doesn't have the flashy features of some other music-cleaning apps - like cleaning up album artwork - it competently completes its assigned tasks.
So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do.
Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game.
The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Rocketboy said 7:56PM on 8-21-2009
Anything like this for Windows? A Winamp plugin maybe?
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Peter said 9:23PM on 8-21-2009
I used iTunes Library Updater (http://itlu.ownz.ch/wordpress/) a while ago when my library got all screwed up. It worked really well. Just be sure to back up the library files before messing with them.
Unfortunately, it looks like it's not being developed any more and might not work well with the current versions of iTunes.
Rocketboy said 11:12AM on 8-23-2009
Ok, to be more specific, something that's not iTunes related.
Kevin said 10:21PM on 8-21-2009
It's a shame iTunes doesn't have a feature like this on its own. I guess that would promote the use of non-iTunes purchased MP3s though.
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risk said 9:39AM on 8-22-2009
it's a shame people would actually use iTunes to manage their music, I used it once, and it absolutely destroyed how my music was sorted by winamp.
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Lee said 11:43PM on 8-22-2009
I've used Song Sergeant and it's sister app, MPFreaker (great app), to manage my itunes songs. They're both great and, working together, provide a ton of features for library management that iTunes lacks.
If you're the type that likes (or needs) an organized music library (must have if your library is of any size), both of these apps are for you... and at $20 buck each, very affordable and well worth it. (Now before anyone complains, come-on, this is chump change and good software at this price is a bargain.)
Check'em out. They both come with a limited trial... and then grab your credit card or paypal account.
Best.
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