In my ongoing quest to clean up my music library, I decided to try the two front runner *commercial* programs. The first being TidySongs, formerly TidyTunes. The second being TuneUp, known for cleaning up the mess “automagically.” I started with TidySongs, because the commercials for TuneUp were annoying. Let’s start with the basics, shall we?
TidySongs
First off, the website is very clean. The most noticeable thing missing was any type of forums or other support mechanism. They only offer a FAQ, which does not cover any real issues and an email address to send to when you have problems. The email address has a note that the person on the other side works 8-5 and will respond as soon as possible. Not very comforting…
At any rate, the install requires Flash and Adobe Air. Once you meet the requirements the link to install works, which I thought was pretty cool. The install downloads the files, dumps an installer on your desktop and then tells you to run it, which I did not think was pretty cool. I went ahead and ran it. After install, I double clicked the application icon, and was presented with a very uninformative error.
Back to the website, no information about this error. Google has failed me. Email support. Now I wait.
If you are like me, and searching for information to make TidySongs work, skip to the end of the article.
TuneUp
The TuneUp website, at first glance, is not very informative about the product. There are two purchase options, one being Gold, the other being Annual. There is no detail on what each option gives you, but I’m a smart guy – I suspect Gold is lifetime and Annual is, well, annual. Digging a little, they offer support forums as well, which you can read without registering.
I downloaded the file, and it installed with no issues or mess. I ran the program, logged in and felt immediately productive. Now, it’s worth noting that TuneUp does not yet offer a way to remove Duplicates. I did some initial analysis and was told that 90% of my library was “messed up”. I found that funny. At any rate, the cleanup was pretty easy, but recommended you only clean 500 songs at a time. I ran into two issues at this point, album artwork caused some songs to fail on the cleanup (fixable) and TuneUp seemed to randomly crash during the cleanup (annoying). I found that if I left the crash message up, TuneUp would continue cleaning.
First impressions are critical. Right now, TuneUp has the lead, but I still have high hopes for TidySongs. I really want the duplicate removal. Onward!
