Here’s the problem…I have a huge iTunes library (18,142 items, 51.6 days, 103.72 GB). I’ve been looking for an easy solution to bring some consistency to my music collection. There are times when I would start a project of going through the collection album by album and artist by artist making sure that I had the correct information and artwork. On a library that size, it could take weeks, even months. Before I get into the actual review, know this…I am “old school” when it comes to buying music. I like going into CD stores and buying a physical copy of an album. Sometimes I find it cheaper in a store than I do on iTunes. Well that, and I don’t trust the ID3 info from iTunes.

After trying some open source solutions and things that were just a glorified mp3 player, I stumbled on TuneUp as a solution after searching online for a couple of months. So far, it has lived up to the promises it makes on the TuneUp website.

Touted as being “made for music collectors, by music collectors”, TuneUp is a great tool for keeping your iTunes library organized. It’s a very easy install and has a free trial allowing you to “clean up” 100 tracks before you have to buy the full version. The full version allows you unlimited access to cleaning up your library either on a $19.95 yearly plan, or a $29.95 lifetime plan (I went with the lifetime option after getting an e-mail with a promo code). 

Once you’ve downloaded the free trial, it takes about 7 seconds for you to get used to the interface. TuneUp launches with iTunes and docks itself on the right side of the screen. Then all you have to do is click and drag the album or song over to TuneUp and it automagically looks up the information in the Gracenote database. Before I get to some of the cool extras, here are some issues that I’ve had with TuneUp:

1. Unless the option is unchecked, once a track is cleaned by TuneUp the words “cleaned by TuneUp” appear in the comments section of the ID3 tag. If your like me, then you have hash-tags to help massage your Smart Playlists. 
2. Not all album artwork is perfect. Fortunately, TuneUp allows you to select different artwork from the database if the wrong one pops up. The down side is that sometimes the artwork you are looking for doesn’t pop in your choices. 
3. Genres…this has to be the biggest reason I bought TuneUp (along with the Year). There are some discrepancies, though between albums of an artist as to what genre they are. 
4. TuneUp does a great job of finding things that you think it wouldn’t like import singles and deluxe versions of albums. 
5. When using TuneUp, it says that you can drag up to 500 songs at a time to be cleaned up. I would caution against this. Easiest way to do it is one or two albums/artists at a time 

The bonus features are nice. TuneUp goes through your library and lets you know the concert schedule with artists in your library. It also gives you links to YouTube videos, Amazon MP3’s, Tickets, etc. 

If you’re in ID3 Hell, I highly recommend TuneUp…it’s not a panacea for all your troubles, but it will restore your faith in your iTunes library.