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Program to clean iTunes library. Current best?

Yendog

Yendog

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 26, 2010
172
24
Sonoma, CA
Looking for advice on the best program to use to clean up file names, artwork etc. on a large iTunes library.. I will drop and drag (I'm a musician and have a lot of unpublished music and don't trust a program to do the whole thing so I will do album by album... mostly to fix titles more than anything)

I have Tune Up but as many people know after they updated it is completely worthless and doesn't work at ALL. So now I'm searching for an alternative.. and I trust you folks!

Library is huge... well over 100K songs...

If there is another current thread on this I apologize but I didn't see it.

Thanks
 
Well I don't quite go album by album.. nice to grab 10 albums and have it do it... and nice to have it automatically get artwork, organize tracks, etc all at once.
 
did some research

MediaMonkey seems like a software people are happy with...
and MusicBrainz Picard could be worth trying as well.
 
Yendog said:
Looking for advice on the best program to use to clean up file names, artwork etc. on a large iTunes library.. I will drop and drag (I'm a musician and have a lot of unpublished music and don't trust a program to do the whole thing so I will do album by album... mostly to fix titles more than anything)

I have Tune Up but as many people know after they updated it is completely worthless and doesn't work at ALL. So now I'm searching for an alternative.. and I trust you folks!

Library is huge... well over 100K songs...

If there is another current thread on this I apologize but I didn't see it.

Thanks
Click to expand...


For mac - I use itunes as it automatically categorizes my music into folders for me based on artists. I went through my entire collection - about 100K songs too and cleaned it up using itunes. It did not take me too long using scripts and patience.


For windows, I use mediamonkey. Although I like foobar's interface a lot, mediamonkey tags my files nicely and I use it to sync my sony walkman and retain tags on that player. Also has nice gapless playback. Easy to manipulate different filters and views for you to clean your collection up.
 
Yendog said:
Well I don't quite go album by album.. nice to grab 10 albums and have it do it... and nice to have it automatically get artwork, organize tracks, etc all at once.
Click to expand...

iTunes can easily get artwork.


What do you mean by "organize tracks"? and "clean up file names"?

Have you checked out dougs scripts? http://dougscripts.com/itunes/

There might be something in there that can help you do whatever it is you are trying to do.
 
Last edited:
Oh yea.. update... I found out you could re-dowload the old TuneUp that works pretty well...

the "get artwork" in iTunes sort of works...

but if your like me and have files that have come from MANY different places you have a lot of files that are not named correctly...

The OLD Tune UP is the best I've found but definitely do it album by album as it often doesn't know what the tracks are and if you don't check everything it could really really screw up your library....I would never let a program do it all automatically... it's not that smart.
 
Yendog said:
Oh yea.. update... I found out you could re-dowload the old TuneUp that works pretty well...

the "get artwork" in iTunes sort of works...

but if your like me and have files that have come from MANY different places you have a lot of files that are not named correctly...

The OLD Tune UP is the best I've found but definitely do it album by album as it often doesn't know what the tracks are and if you don't check everything it could really really screw up your library....I would never let a program do it all automatically... it's not that smart.
Click to expand...

Where were you able to download the old tune up? And do you know if they took the entire service offline? It sounds like they are no longer in business as of Jan. 31, 2014. I really actually liked their program, so I am lost as to what to use now. Maybe mediamonkey is the next thing, but it doesn't look like it really does what Tune Up did.
 
cool.. I'll check it out.... can you drag and drop directly from iTunes? at first glance it looked as if you might need to go into the actual folders from your description.

I'll check it out though! Thanks.
 
Great.. yea put a reply up when you get the update live... would love to check it out...

The thing that Tune Up did have right was that it was easy to drag and drop individual albums into the interface... and then you could immediately see if they "got it right"

cause theres no way I'm going to trust a program to do all my files without me checking them... my library is too important for that...

I think most people would be happy to put in some time of their own to double check the program before allowing it to do its thing.... (or at least I would)

looking forward to seeing what you figure out.
 
I sometimes use SongGenie, but it's unreliable. By unreliable, I don't mean it crashes, but it doesn't always find the correct song/album. Sometimes, it doesn't recognize the song at all. It can do your whole library at once, but it's slow and may put in the wrong information. Though when it does find the correct information, it's really helpful. All I can say is, try at your own risk.
 
SongKong is pretty good.

I purchased TuneUp quite a while ago and found it close to useless.
 
The Best ? Gracenotes is the largest music database, so i do not use any as all of the auto-taggers (tuneupmedia, Mediamonkey, Mp3 Tag (auto-tagging) (all windows) are hit & miss at best..

I have used most of them and generally i've found the only way if to tag them yourself... look up info yourself. I use a mix of iOS apps. MusicID (which pulls from Sony Gracenotes DB), and Shazam, (not sure which DB it relies on), to assist me and also looking it up on iTunes Store as well as perhaps sources from Discogs too..

These should be a good start at tagging about 80% of music easily.... and the other 20% can often be tried with automated software.

I do believe (like I once did) that auto-tagging "just run it up and leave" type of software, or very reduced manual editing needed to "just work and you have a clean library"

if you are going to be editing anyway, do it right. It takes a while, but its worth it as you KNOW its right :D
 
Tech198 said:
The Best ? Gracenotes is the largest music database, so i do not use any as all of the auto-taggers (tuneupmedia, Mediamonkey, Mp3 Tag (auto-tagging) (all windows) are hit & miss at best..

I have used most of them and generally i've found the only way if to tag them yourself... look up info yourself. I use a mix of iOS apps. MusicID (which pulls from Sony Gracenotes DB), and Shazam, (not sure which DB it relies on), to assist me and also looking it up on iTunes Store as well as perhaps sources from Discogs too..

These should be a good start at tagging about 80% of music easily.... and the other 20% can often be tried with automated software.

I do believe (like I once did) that auto-tagging "just run it up and leave" type of software, or very reduced manual editing needed to "just work and you have a clean library"

if you are going to be editing anyway, do it right. It takes a while, but its worth it as you KNOW its right :D
Click to expand...
I would take issue with the idea that because you do it yourself, you know its right. Manually looking up and editing tags is time-consuming AND error prone. The problem with using auto-taggers is that users can have unrealistic expectations and not take the time to actually understand the tools before unleashing over their whole music collection, and then not check the results.

I would advocate using automated tagger not only as a time saver but because they can apply changes in a more consistent way then manual editor. But the key is to understand the tool and check your results, tools that allow you to check results before saving the modifications or tools with an Undo feature are best.
 
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