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Filed under: Audio, Utilities, Windows, Macintosh, Productivity

TidySongs cleans up your messy music library

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.

Filed under: Audio, Business, Apple

Apple to raise prices on hot iTunes tracks, remove DRM

Starting April 7, Apple's long-standing policy of selling every song in the iTunes Store for 99 cents is reportedly going to be shaken up. Hot tracks will go up to $1.29, and some less-than-hot selections will drop to 69 cents.

The LA Times is reporting that most songs will probably stay at the current 99 cent price, and that the lower price could be used to promote new artists. Meanwhile, some classic artists with consistent high sales might end up at the higher $1.29 price.

If you're a fan of obscure bands, this could work for you by lowering prices at the end of the long tail, saving you money on your hidden gems. On the other hand, popular songs wouldn't be popular if they didn't have a lot of fans -- fans who could get angry at having the price jacked up suddenly after years of paying one price for a track, regardless of popularity.

Good news for everyone, though: tracks at all price points are reportedly going to be DRM free and playable on any mp3-playing gadget.

Filed under: Audio, Fun, Internet

Text to voice is old school - Let them sing it for you

let them sing it for youThere's no shortage of applications that will convert text into Stephen Hawking-esque speech. Rarely do the results sound human, or even good.

Let them sing it for you takes a different approach. Instead of text to speech, the site converts text into music. Or rather, it finds each word you've typed into a box as a snippet from a song. Then it plays those snippets back to back. If you input a word that it doesn't know, you can enter a song in which that word appears and eventually someone will get around to programming your word. It's all done by hand, so don't expect instant results.

The end product doesn't really make for much more pleasant listening than the robotic voices on an automated tech support line. But somehow it's a lot funnier. Now, does anybody know a song that uses the words "download," and "squad?"

[via Neatorama]

Filed under: Audio, Business, Internet, Kids, News, Web services

Teens wonder where their songs should come from

Dude where's my songsLegally old enough teens cannot buy songs from online services legitimately, because they all require a credit card, which not many teens have. Not only is this helping to drive the piracy rate among teens, it also illustrates another critical piece of information on why piracy is so rampant. The original problem of piracy is one of the service providers not giving consumers what they want. Let me explain. If someone made a way for teens (the biggest pirates out there according to studies) a way to legitimately get music, many would do it. Teens get sucked in by friends when there is no other alternative. As with drugs, clothes, electronics, and other stuff, teens will go where they have to to get what they want, and not just teens but people in general. People in general however (meaning adults) have a means with credit cards in their name to buy music. It is the same conundrum as the music to the mass deal before when Napster was being sued. Give the people what they want and they will come running, especially the younger generation. Why do you think MySpace is so popular?

Filed under: Audio, Business, Web services, Apple

Sony Ericsson's music download service

sony ericsson music downloadsSony Ericsson is ramping up to launch its music download service. Details of the new service were released Tuesday, and spoke about allowing full music downloading of up-and-coming artists though its mobile phones, with mainstream artists being integrated at a later date. I would imagine that it could be possible to transfer these music downloads to your PC, so you could enjoy music outside of your mobile phone. The new service is called M-BUZZ, and Sony sees this as a giant step at increasing the units sold, and making the M-BUZZ world a strong differentiating feature. It seems like this could also be a move to step up to the competition of the iPod. There were no reports as to when the service will exactly be launched, only talk about late in the second half of 2006.

Filed under: Audio, Utilities, Macintosh, Shareware

Making WMA files Mac-friendly

How many times have you wanted to save a WMA audio file into your iTunes library on your Mac, only to realize that the only tool you can use to play the file is the Mac version of Windows Media Player?  Not a happy situation. Thankfully, the good folks at TUAW pointed out a tool that makes rapid-fire conversion of WMA files into iTunes-friendly MP3 a snap.  Called EasyWMA, this piece of $10 shareware lets you queue up a batch of WMAs to convert while you pour yourself a cup of coffee or play World of Warcraft.  One small bit of caution, though--the program might not support the latest WMA 10 format. Check it out here.

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