Tidy Songs – iTunes Library Janitor
-Great interface
-Doesn't work so well with more obscure music
-Can be slow while working
Picture it. 6,000 music tracks in your collection, 200-some artists, 500-some albums. Strewn about your iTunes library like your 7-year-old’s room. But wait, you don’t have to picture it, do you? Because this, friends, is reality. Tidy Songs would have you believe it will selflessly slave over your music collection, scrubbing down the dirty tags and misspellings like some kind of clean freak. But can it live up to our demands?
Tidy Songs is an Adobe Air app that loads to a simple welcome screen which lets you get started pretty quickly. There’s no setup to do. Just click Start and you’re whisked off to the Main Menu where you select from 4 options: Add Album Art, Find Duplicates, Fix Your Songs, and Organize Genres. They’re all pretty self explanatory, so let’s get right into it.
Add Album Art works like a charm. It looks up the songs in a selected playlist (you can choose to scan your entire library as well) and checks them against it’s sources (I’m assuming one of them to be Amazon). When a discrepancy is detected, it presents its findings to you and you can choose to keep the current artwork, add the new artwork, or input your own URL where the correct artwork is located, and it will download it for you.
Find Duplicates worked well in my tests as well. There is the option to automatically delete these duplicates according to bit rate and song length, however this one you’ll probably need to manually approve each change, especially if you have a lot of live albums where song titles are exactly the same.
Fixing songs themselves proved to be a little tricky for me. To test this functionality, I made some changes to my song titles and documented each change. All of my semi-popular music was recognized and fixed without a hitch. However, my problems arose when summoning information on more obscure bands, and if you have a lot of this kind of music, you may have to use the Manual mode here as well. I don’t fault Tidy Songs for this, as I would think this is a problem with the tracklist and information in the public database it is querying. However, if you’ve got a lot of well to semi-well-known artists in your library, Tidy Songs should have no problem clearing up any weird titles and information. Speed-wise, if you’re going to let it do its thing automatically, and depending on how many songs you have, I’d let it go overnight. In my own library of a few thousand songs, it took quite a few hours to complete its scans and fixes. Also, you can’t listen to music through iTunes while it’s cleaning, so either do it while you won’t be home, or fire up Pandora and check out some new music while you wait.
Probably the feature I found the least use for was Organize Genres. It simply allows you to change all of the variations on a genre to one. For example, I have varying genres of Rock in my library such as Alternative-Rock, Alt-punk, Indie, Indie-Pop, Rock/Pop, Indie Rock…you get the picture. It offers to take all of these and combine them into one category of its or your choosing.
While fixing, you can tell Tidy Songs to skip songs with certain words as well, giving you an added “Don’t touch” filter. All in all, the app works great. Compared to TuneUp, my experience was above and beyond what I ever expected it to be, and that experience comes with a price tag. $39 to be exact. Worth it? I’d say yes. Especially if your library is big and in rough shape. You could spend days retagging and reorganizing a large iTunes library- let Tidy Songs do it for you.
[...] Dan Gribbin from Macapper reviewed TidySongs and pointed out the features of the program that he found helpful. He found that artwork for iTunes was one of the more helpful features. From his blog: “It looks up the songs in a selected playlist (you can choose to scan your entire library as well) and checks them against it’s sources (I’m assuming one of them to be Amazon). When a discrepancy is detected, it presents its findings to you and you can choose to keep the current artwork, add the new artwork, or input your own URL where the correct artwork is located, and it will download it for you.” [...]
Thanks for telling your readers about us, Dan! I created some discount codes for the first 25 users who purchase TidySongs. Use the discount code: “macapper” to receive the discounted price. Email me at kelly@tidysongs.com if you have any questions for us.
Thanks!
Thanks for the codes, Kelly! I hope some of our readers take advantage of it!
Hiya,
Thank you for detailed review. But I have a question. I speak five languages, so I listen music in different languages. (mostly English, Spanish, Russian and Turkish). So, can TidySongs organise my library?
@Bakhtier I would recommend using our free trial. We let you pick 100 songs to fix and this would be a good way for you to test if TidySongs is the right program for you. Our database consists of mostly English song titles and album information, but using the trial would be helpful so that you can tell how TidySongs will be able to organize for you.
I just bought this w/o trying it. BIG mistake, INHO!
This app has the most convoluted installation of any app I’ve ever seen.
It is tied to one Mac so it can’t be used on a laptop after it has been installed on a desktop.
This app runs outside of iTunes so one can’t see anything in the context of iTunes. When I am Fixing songs one by one (review before fix) I am not given any indication what data is being fixed. That is a total deal breaker for me. How stupid of the developer not to highlight the perceived error.
The Help button links to an unlinked email address and a linked twitter address. There is no documentation anywhere that I could find.
The install placed a 1.9 MB TidySongs Utility item in my Applications folder and a 397 KB TidySongs App on my desktop. Why two things?
Looking up album cover art has an annoying reflection applied to the preview view when you choose to do it one by one. This can make it difficult to see some of the text on some album art. There is also no indication as to the size of the previewed art nor are there options available.
I don’t know why there are so many items skipped when I go to do something to a playlist.
Compared to TuneUp, which is much less expensive, this program doesn’t come off very well.
I sure wish I had tried this out in advance and I sure wish that there was a refund available.
Hugh -
I’m the lead developer for TidySongs (I like to think I’m not dumb, but who knows…). I’d like to address a couple of your points:
1) TidySongs uses two files “App” and “Utility”. They are both necessary – one is the interface you see and use and the other is a helper file that “talks” to iTunes. Unfortunately, iTunes doesn’t play very well with other programs and this two-program method is necessary. You can move them both to your Applications folder, but they are both necessary.
2) You can see what data is being fixed. TidySongs shows you the current song details and what they are being fixed too. Fixed songs are then put in a special iTunes playlist so you can see the results.
3) TidySongs always uses the largest available album art image size. This is what users have always asked for. If a smaller size is added to a song, that is because that is the largest size available. As for the reflection… We thought it looked cool. I’m sorry if you don’t like it.
4) TidySongs will “skip” songs it doesn’t know how to fix (because it can’t find information on the song). You can help TidySongs fix the skipped songs by adding a little bit of information (like an artist name).
I’m sorry you had issues with the program.
We’re really proud of TidySongs and think it is the best way out there to fix a lot of your songs quickly.
Daniel,
Thank you for the reply.
Mea Culpa!! My fault entirely for not seeing the part of the window that, in hindsight, clearly shows the data being changed. I guess it was the lack of highlighting that caused my temporary blindness.
I apologize for any insinuation that you might be dumb or stupid.
I feel, in retrospect, that the methodology used by TidySongs is really meant as a simple method for most people to rapidly fix problems with their iTunes library. For one-click simplicity I would suggest TidySongs to anyone.
For my needs I prefer a more integrated solution but there is no question that such a solution is somewhat more complex and requires more effort on the part of the user that the elegant TidySongs approach.
As an example I would point to the album art aspect. TidySongs will supply the largest available album art image. The user will have, in most cases, the correct art and in all cases they will have attractive art where they previously had nothing. Other programs may provide several images in various sizes which allow the user to select, manually, the UK import album artwork or perhaps the artwork without a “sale” banner that sometimes appears on Amazon albums. TidySongs will unquestionably provide the tidiest cleanup with the least amount of user effort. For the majority of users I am sure it will be perfect.
In my case I have a large iTunes library that has consumed many hours/days/weeks/months of time spent entering data. It was in the pursuit of the latest and greatest that I bought TidySongs without trying it out first. Its simplicity hid its capabilities and I was looking for something that would give me an edge in fine-tuning that is not, at least in my use, the purpose of TidySongs.
I encourage people to try TidySongs. I think the majority will enjoy the results.
It is perfect for filling in the details and artwork that most people have found missing in their iTunes library.
Kelly kindly refunded my purchase price so I can recommend the promptness of the Cloudbrain customer service. Thank you very much,
Hugh
Daniel, I too bought Tidy Songs without trying it based on this review. No problems with the install or anything, but the program cannot finish running a session on my iTunes to eliminate all the duplicate songs I have. My library, which is about 70,000 songs, is mostly dupes, with maybe 4000 unique individual songs. Would this be an issue with your program? The error I keep getting is that iTunes stopped responding or severed the connection with Tidy Songs.
You know what, I spent WEEKS cleaning my iTunes library — and I promise I have the cleanest library you’re likely to find thanks to my growing OCD and my wife being away on a movie set — and I still recommend doing it by hand. There’s just too much an app can get wrong.
There’s nothing Wikipedia and a little google-fu can’t do.
That said I, the first place to start is Album Art Exchange (http://www.albumartexchange.com/covers.php?sort=3&q=&fltr=1&bgc=&page=) for really, really high quality cover art. Amazon only if you have to and after a trip to Discogs.org. Bing.com is surprisingly good with image searches too.
Seriously, DIY.
I have an itunes file with over 240,000 songs. According to itunes, almost 145,000 are duplicates.
Can Tidy Songs handle a file of this size? How long would it take to run against a file this large (over 1tb)? I’m not interested in doing anything in manual mode.
Itunes not responding in tidysongs arrg why me by the way my tune up isnt working either something is terrribly wrong, tuneup says some tracks not found, tidysongs crashes, ive sent logs sigh.. help.. tidysongs uhoh itunes not responding please restart
Ross,
you can use some applescripts to fix this.
look for Doug’s AppleScripts for iTunes at google.
\
Thanks GabrielCP……I have a PC and not a MAC. So, I’m still looking into other possible fixes. I have a backup for my Itunes file, so I will probably use a program that looks for duplicate files and deletes them. Then I will see what I have. My original file will still be intact if something goes South.
I still have about 100 CD’s to add before I try this fix. Fun and games!
Save your cash, there are so many free ways to tidy up your itunes.
Don’t use this program. It’s a steep price at $39, particularly given the stability issues it has. It wouldn’t fix my songs, and after several attempts to get support for the product with NO RESPONSE whatsoever, I have filed a claim with my credit card to be refunded.
Bad software. Steer clear!
I am in the same boat as Hugh. I have a fairly large library, about 19000 songs, and I know I have tons of duplicates. I bought Tidysongs to help me clear out the dupes. I have tried running the application dozens of times with zero success. Tidysongs either drops the connection to Itunes, which is weird since both programs reside on my C: drive, or it says that I may need to update my file permissions, whatever that means. It seems to recognize the total volume of my songs, since the total songs number corresponds to the number of songs that I have in my library. Okay, so Tidysongs has found zero duplicate songs, which is just stupid. I sent two emails through the help screen to a person named Kelly. It has been at least a week, and so far, no one from Tidysongs has responded to my request for help. That brings up another thing: there is little to no supporting documentation with this product, and the extent of the help window is that if the user is having trouble with the program, then send an email to Kelly. I wish I had done more research, as I have wasted the investment money as well as dozens of hours of searching on google for some help with this program. After getting no response from my request for help, I have asked for a refund, but so far nobody from this company has responded. At this point, I would not advise anyone to buy Tidysongs!
It might work, but not for me. No results, no help, no refund equals NO GOOD!
I installed this and it won’t even try to run on windows XP.
Restarted the machine and it still won’t start up.
Doesn’t make me want to give up my $40
Works on my Mac but has yet to find the right tagging info for the song. What good is tagging software that you have to put the artist and the song name in?
There has to be software out there that can read the signature of a song and tag it.
iPhone app Shazam can pick a song from playing it and tell you what it is. Why can’t these apps do the same thing?
I am the same i only have 2000 songs and the program will freeze after it has searched for no more than 60 seconds. I am based in the UK is this maybe a reason for it, i have also noticed on some albums you have found the covers for are incorrect its taking the artist rather than the album name so i am having to fix this manually. I use a PC with windows XP and not an apple mac could this be an issue although it shouldnt as the website states it should work with this but it seems not to.
I bought Tidy Songs about a month ago, and I’ve had nothing but issues with it. I used the trial, and it seemed to work for my needs, and the install and use of it wasn’t a problem. But since I bought the full version, I’ve had nothing but issues and very little help from the company (I would just use the FAQ or a board on their site, but there wasn’t anything useful on there). I don’t know if I’m the only one having this many issues (which I find hard to believe since I’m not a total computer idiot) but it’s kind of ridiculous.
I keep getting different error messages saying it can’t connect to iTunes or the internet (when clearly I’m connected to both since I’m posting here).
It also gets maybe a max of 100 songs before freezing up, then when I go back to the main screen and try to start over, it just sits idly and then I have to close and open the program again.
I got ONE email for support, saying to try and lengthen the program time so it takes 10 sec a track (hoping that would prevent an error from occuring) but that didn’t do anything, and the program is still extremely glitchy.
For a program of this cost, and this limited, I’m extremely disappointed and will definitely be spreading the word.
Well, I’m a sucker as well. I figured 50 free songs wasn’t going to cut it for the trial. So I bought the full version thinking obviously there’s not many WINDOWS versions out there that will fix the duplicates. Problem is when it piles them into ONE folder, I have to go threw all of the songs to make sure they really are duplicates. If you don’t do that, it WILL erase your albums. That’s really stupid. The whole point of paying the money is to have it at least be successful 99.9 percent of the time. I did an estimate of how many songs it erased or pulled out that were not duplicates, 39%! That’s horrible! And it didn’t get all the duplicates, I went back into a search folder and found over 200 still hanging around, what the Deal!? I understand that there may be a number in front of the song or different ways of how people type them in, but why does it erase songs that are not duplicates to begin with? On top of that I figured it would organize my files where I had them to begin with, nope it moved them all under itunes folder twice, where I never store all my songs. I actually had them organized by genare. It’s just a good thing all I have to do is erase the stupid mistakes it’s made and go to my external hard drive and download how I had it to begin with. I hope someone reads this and just does it the hard way because it’s the only way WINDOWS people can do it. Itunes has a tab for duplicates, click on that and just use the ctrl tab with the mouse to get rid of them. At least then you know it’s not someone elses User Error because they can’t do code for the program right.
Tidy Get a Clue your program is not Faulty proof, obvisouly you moved it into production with out fixing all the bugs. Even the one where it disconnects from itunes because Genius is running in the background. That happens all the time if you don’t stop Genius. The next bug you need to work on is adding a couple of lines in your code of what to really erase. If it’s going to just erase my music folder I can do that myself. Also, no one is going to be bright and look through all the duplicate songs folder you create on the screen. If the program is really not sure if it’s a duplicate it should not move it period or ask prior. You know what how about you just pay me to tell you what to fix since you need that information reading forums. No more free bees!
I am a Mac user (Leopard) after the installation everything seems to work fine (recognizes playlists and the songs) but when I try to correct the tag does not make any changes. I do not know what to do, I wonder if the program is installed correctly, since the procedure is somewhat convoluted and difficult (not frendly). I HOPE THAT:
1 – vs. MANY REQUESTS ARE PROVIDED TO ALL THOSE WHO are paying a SERIOUS SUPPORT
2 – being upgraded version of TIDYSONGS tackle the various problems and simplify the process INSTALLATION
3 – IF MY WISH THESE WILL NOT BE FULFILLED hopes to raise a lot of success FROM ALL THOSE WHO HAVE PAID TO COMPANY FOR CAUSE AND DO FARC GIVE MONEY BACK
GRAZIANO
I’m having a lot of the same problems. I bought this last night in the hopes of letting it run over night. Well I find the same error boxes this morning – Applescript errors and constant dropping of the iTunes connection. I’ve gotten it around 50-60 time so far and now it happens every few seconds – and yes, I have iTunes completely quiescent. I just purchased a new iMac and have not even turned Genius on yet. I’m sending an error report to Tidysongs each time it happens now (it’s getting old) but I hope it mimics a little of the aggravation I’m going through.
“Uh Oh. Problem.
iTunes is not responding.
Please restart iTunes”
uggg….
I want my money back. This program simply does not work.
I’m having the same issues here, Tidy Songs does not complete the scanning of the duplicate files. Stops at around 50% what the heck I spent 40 Bucks on this!!! I was highly Optimistic and Happy at first when I discovered a program existed such as this but to find that it doesn’t work is highly disappointing.Please help.
Very nice review! You really went in depth with your analysis of the program. Personally I have had quite a bit of success with TIdysongs and would highly recommend the program.
Great job writing an honest review and describing every detail of Tidysongs.
I have Windows 7 64 bit. I used a free utility called Easy Duplicate Finder (Google it) and was able to find 70,000 duplicates on my itunes file of 241,000. Because of the size of my file it took a few hours to run. I ran it twice to make sure the file was clean. It appears to be locked, but give it time it is just chugging away in the background doing it’s thing. One other thing….after it finds the duplicates, right click on the list for a list of options such as delete oldest or delete newest etc.
TidySongs is a great concept, but a buggy waste of time due to repeated “iTunes not responding” errors. I requested a refund and, frankly, really resent the time I spent screwing around with it.
This would be unacceptable quality for junk software that one finds on trashy freeware sites, much less a $39 purchase.
In addition, the “support” page is little more than fluff, and lacks all of the standard elements that one expects to find: knowledge base, forum, bug reports, work-arounds, technical FAQ, etc. The out-of-date blog is yet more fluff, and the Twitter feeds are pointless and irritating.
I am very supportive of fresh concepts, but poor quality is never, ever acceptable.
i have had trouble with Tidy Songs making incomplete duplicate searches. It seems to get some but not them all. with my large library, this is quite frustrating and brings me no closer to my goal of having a clean library.
i have contacted Kelly about the issue and got no response other than “we are working on it” and several weeks later, i have still not heard back. i recently asked to have my money refunded and she sent me this message:
“We don’t provide the refund here because the purchase was made through Clickbank. You have to make the request through Clickbank since that is where your purchase was made. Please reference their refund policies and information to find out how to get a refund. ”
damn, if i gave money to Tidysongs then why cant they give it back to me? and if you really don’t wont to fool with the third party refund process, could you at least send me to link that will actually help me get me money back?
too bad that TIdysongs is apparently not interested providing quality customer service or a program that works……. save your money on this one folks!
@jeff
I’m sorry that you’re having difficulty receiving the refund. You purchased TidySongs through an affiliate instead of directly from us, so the refund will need to come from them. This is the link you are looking for: http://www.clickbank.com/orderDetail.htm?clear=true&locale=EN
You’ll put in your clickbank order number from your purchase receipt from clickbank and the purchase will be refunded.
I’m sorry that TidySongs was not the right program for you.
Best Regards,
Kelly
tidy songs would be the right program for me if it worked!
I bought Tidy Songs based on some reviews on other sites. All I can say now is stay far away from this program. I have asked for my money back, hopefully that will happen. The program has been running for over 18hours now. I have a lot of songs, over 62k, but all I want to find is duplicates. That should not take 18 hours, and it is only at 34% complete. I could have written my own program in that amount of time. I’m wishing I had at this point.
I just bought Tidy Songs today and it immediately indicated that it couldn’t compete the search for duplicates due to itunes not responding. I don’t think I would complain about much of anything if the program was simply capable of doing the one simple thing it is supposed to do, find duplicates and remove them.
way to go Jeff, It’s too bad that there’s way too many people that hate this program, great concept piss poor programming skills!
Sure wish I’d read this half hour ago. Now they’ve got my $30 , and all I have is a worthless headache!!!
Uh Oh. Problem.
iTunes is not responding.
Please restart iTunes
I want my $30 bucks back!!! And I bought direct from Tidysong site, but was redirected to clickbank for payment… interesting, almost like laundering
I emailed support and after a few rounds I got my money back. I too bought the program directly off the tidysongs website. As soon as I mentioned the iTunes not responding error I got my money back. Guess they realize they have a serious issue. I wish the company the best of luck but everyone please stay away from this program, at least until they fix their issues.
Not a bad program but similar issues as others with loss of connection to iTunes.
I used Easy Duplicate Finder (Free) on my win7 machine and then imported all of the songs into an empty iTunes and then ran Pollux ($10) to clean up my tags and artwork. Granted, it took 3+ days to clean up 32000 files but 1) It works 2) it is 1/4 the price AND they will allow you to activate it on your desktop AND laptop after a simple request to support (with a one day turnaround)
I would be tempted to try/wait for fix’s of Tidysongs at $19 but $39????
I dont mind paying more IF the company offers great support but that is not what it looks like they are providing from other posts above.
Nice idea, I was intrigued by the fact that this program works in the background and can auto-clean your library.
However….
- Had Trouble getting the installation to work. Had to uninstall and re-install the whole package including adobe air (why does it run on Adobe Air? I can see why a developer would choose that, but for me it _seemed_ to make things more complicated and I would have preferred a native program.) Communication with TidySongs support was swift.
- TidySongs does not seem to affect the “Last Changed” date shown in iTunes.
- TidySongs does NOT create a Playlist in iTunes for me. Communication with TidySongs support was not quite the same pleasant experience as before: No response after the first email for a week, emailed again and then got the “works for us over here” answer. Well, glad to hear that it works for you guys, but, quite frankly, that does not help me. Another email asking for some more help remained unanswered as of yet. A support inquiry filed twice (more than a week apart from each other) through the software built-in Error-Report feature has not resulted in an answer either.
With that said, I regret to say that I cannot use the software as-is, and I’m sorry to see that the initial good impression of the support responsiveness could not be confirmed later on. I wish I could recommend the software and support a “small” and promising software company, but alas, given the above, I cannot do so at this time. I’m hoping for an update with a fix. Until then, my bottom line is: Great idea, but software needs some more work to make it useable.
tidysongs crashes way to much after about 5 songs, not good.
oh and if you guys have duplicates on itunes then go file and display duplicates and delete them
I purchased Tidy Songs and unfortunately my hard drive crashed. I have sent multiple emails to Tidy Songs (Kelly) to find out how I can get a replacement version and there is no response. I am beginning to think that customer service is non existent with this or they believe they will get another purchase out of me. Not the case – will be looking for other options.
Count me in the ranks that are now frustrated by spending $39 to have the program lock up and not complete the job. I wold never reco this program to anyone..
Don’t pay for Tidysongs. It’s not worth it. You can get it for free with a little work by following this Youtube video. However, it only works sometimes and you need to validate your purchase before you try to use it otherwise it won’t change anything in iTunes. It’s an easy, free way to fix the majority of your songs, however 2/3 of the time it will say “Looking up songs” and get stuck there.
Youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5izNNMTzXN4
Happy (and unhappy) fixing
Ash.
I wish I had found this website and read the complaints before I paid $39 of hard-earned money for this program! Unlike almost every other Mac program I have downloaded and purchased, it has given me nothing but trouble and disappointment. First I had to re-download Adobe Air because I could get TidySongs to run on double-clicking after a few successful launches. Then when it launches and I try to use it, I repeatedly get the cutesy “Uh oh …” message telling me that iTunes is not responding and to quit and relaunch iTunes; then I get the damn “Uh oh” message over and over again after following its instruction to relaunch iTunes over and over again.
This is simply an unreliable program.
I gave up this afternoon and spent only $15 to download and purchase “Dupin” and it worked IMMEDIATELY on the first try, at first with a few selected groups to gain my confidence, and then with the rest in one fell swoop. No error messages blaming iTunes for not responding which in my opinion is a poor substitute for good programming.
You guys should be ashamed to first promote this program as “FREE” and then clip them for THIRTY-NINE DOLLARS for gosh sakes for a program riddled with error and unreliability.
And I supposed I will be horsed around when I seek a refund. You folks probably slipped a “NO REFUND” clause in there somewhere.
Kudos to ClickBank who responded very quickly and said they were refunding my money.
Now I am trying to get this program off my computer and everytime I try to drag it to the trash I get a message that “TidySongs App” can’t be moved to the Trash because it’s open! Even when I hold down the Option key.
I checked the Activity Monitor on my laptop and it doesn’t list the app as running, so I can’t do a force delete.
How do I get rid of this wretched program? What the heck is it doing?
can Doug’s AppleScripts for iTunes help with the Applescript error? I can only get through a small subset of the songs before I have to close programs and restart for the process to start working again.
Thanks for writing this Tidysongs review and hosting such an active discussion. I was close to purchasing this program this morning to help deal with over 10,000 duplicates. From the responses I’m confident I’d have had problems and been out the $30. *sigh* now off to a Sunday filled with manual deletions.
Why settle for manual deletions, Deftone? I found that Dupin does it all without problems. I think I paid $15 for it.
You can get it off the Apple site at http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/ipod_itunes/dupin.html
Nate
Moved over from Fix Tunes to Tidy Songs. Sorry to say that this is one of the most aggravating and useless programs I have used in quite some time. Constant drops of the connection to the Tidy Songs “server”. Makes me think it is being hosted on an old 8-bit C-64. Ridiculous waste of both time and money. Great concept; NO EXECUTION!