Tagtrum’s beaTunes is a useful iTunes tool for Mac OS X and Windows users. It can detect various types of metadata, such as beats-per-minute and musical key, as well as find and fix typos and inconsistencies such as misspellings and rarely used genres. The latest version (3.5.11) has improved typo inspection to better cover dangling articles (such as “Cars, The”).
Let’s face it: you can accumulate so many tunes in iTunes that inconsistencies and glitches appear. What’s more, if, like me, you rip CDs to the software, there may be missing info. BeaTunes can help with such shortcomings. It intelligently creates playlists of matching songs, corrects your iTunes Music Library (typos, wrong genres, a misnamed album, etc.) and more.
One of my favorite features is the ability to search for and add missing data such as album artwork, which is more comprehensives than those features in iTunes itself.
BeaTunes also analyzes the color and tempo (BPM) of your songs and lets you create playlists based on this info. You can even blog about your playlists (though I have absolutely no desire to do this) and more. All of the changes are, of course, reflected in iTunes.
BeaTunes isn’t a plug-in; it’s app that works in tandem with iTunes. It offers drag and drop installation. Once you launch it, on-screen prompts leads you through an analysis of your iTunes library.
BeaTunes’ Library Inspection finds and alerts you to the discrepancies in the library. Then it’s your call as to what corrections/changes you’d like to make.
Note that BeaTunes can be slow to launch initially if, like me, you have a big iTunes Otherwise, BeaTunes makes a fine buddy for iTunes.
A 14-day demo version is available at the product web site. Registration is US$34.95. BeaTunes requires Mac OS X 10.5.8 or higher. For more info go to http://www.beatunes.com/ .
ADR rating: 8 out of 10
