Here are some highlights from the press coverage TuneUp received:

- Our CEO Gabe Adiv was interviewed by Billboard.biz.

- USA Today gave us a nice shout out.

- Both cnet.com and eweek.com were loving the TuneUp Bus!

Also, check out a few of our photos from the event. We shared these from our Instagram!

Do you Instagram? Find us there, we’re tuneup_media!

Yep, you’ve guessed it – the album cover above is the winner for the “When You’re Strange” Cover Art of 2011 Contest!

Congratulations to Miguel Barriaga, you’ve won a $50 gift card to Amazon.com. Keep an eye on your inbox for a note from us.

We had a great time looking through your entries – big thanks to all who entered!

For New Music Friday, we want to present to you “Somebody That I Used To Know”, the song that everyone has been talking about. It’s by Gotye, (pronounced go-tea-yay), a Belgian-Australian singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. This song has been dominating the charts and we are absolutely drinking the cool-aid!

Listen to the song below, and also check out the amazing cover by Canadian indie-band Walk off the Earth. We didn’t even know about the Walk off the Earth cover until TuneUp Newsletter-reader Hilly Leopold recommended it to us – so, big thanks to Hilly!

Here is the Gotye version:

And, the Walk off the Earth version:

Do you have a favorite?

Have a recommendation for New Music Friday? Send us your request!

It would be hard for us to welcome the New Year without an honest, heart-felt thank you for all of your love, support and patience in 2011. We know that the past year wasn’t without its bumps along the road, but we’ve learned a ton, and are really looking forward to the months ahead in 2012. We welcome every single piece of feedback from our users, and will make addressing your grievances and continuing to build a better product top priority this year.

With that said, we also wanted to share some of the exciting things we have planned for 2012:

First are foremost, we’ll be releasing TuneUp 2.4 in the coming weeks. TuneUp 2.4 is a major stability release that will address a number of the performance issues that some of you have been experiencing. More on what’s included in that when it’s ready…

Support for lyrics by the end of the year. This is probably one of the most commonly suggested feature from our users. We listened, and we’re building a great platform to give you the ability to (correctly) belt out your favorite songs when you want to.

A super-cool mobile app. We can’t say much more than that right now, but we’re really excited about bringing some of TuneUp’s power to your mobile experience.

We wouldn’t be able to do any of this without you, and once again want to truly thank you for your support.

Onward and upward,

The TuneUp Team

You may have seen our post last week that highlighted some of our favorite songs of 2011, and compiling that list got us thinking about all of the cool album art we saw this year. It also made us realize that there was a decent amount of, well, strange album art! With that in mind, we wanted to see what you all thought and run a TuneUp Contest!  So, what was the strangest album cover you’ve seen this year?

Let us know which artist and album you thought had the most intriguing, bizarre and all around strange album art and you’ll automatically be entered to win a $50 gift card to Amazon.com!

Entering this contest is super easy, just make sure you follow these steps:

- Choose the album cover that you would describe as “strange”. The album must have been released in 2011.

- Submit your entry in the comments section below.

- Your entry must include: the artist name, album name and a link to the cover art. For example:

“Young Galaxy – Shapeshifting http://bit.ly/wPavaX”

Now, go scan your cover flow and share the weirdest with us!

One entry per person. Contest ends on Monday, February 6, 2012 at 12:00pm PST. Good luck!

We wanted to remind you about our awesome referral program, where for every friend that you refer to purchase TuneUp, you’ll get $10 towards an iTunes, Amazon, Target or PayPal gift card – your choice! Also, just this year we upped the ante and for every 5 referrals that result in a purchase, you get a FREE copy of TuneUp!

This program is our way of saying thanks for spreading the word about the best music organizer on the planet!  There are many ways to share, like through personalized emails (including contact list importing), posting your unique link on your social networks like Facebook and Twitter and for all you bloggers out there, you could publish a referral widget to your Blogger and WordPress.

Sound good? Learn more - your friends will thank you!

2011 was quite the year for music. We thought it was so wonderful that we made – gasp – a two hour playlist! We really dug some new folks like Yuck, Those Darlins and San Francisco locals Thee Oh Sees; and also loved fantastic new releases from TuneUp favorites Bon Iver, Fleet Foxes and Wilco. This definitely does not cover all of the great music that graced our ears this year, but in any case, sit back, relax & enjoy!

What were some of your favorites from 2011? Share your thoughts below!

You are going to stick to your resolutions this year – and we want to help! TuneUp fixes those annoying “Track 01′s”, replaces missing album art and removes duplicate tracks so you don’t have to. Check that off the list!

Mashable thinks it’s a good idea, too.

Just use promo code NEWYEAR at check out to get 20% Off ALL TuneUp Products!

Buy TuneUp Now »

This Month in Music History:

1957: The Cavern Club opens in Liverpool. It would go on to become the home of many Liverpool bands including The Beatles who appeared at the club 292 times.
1961: The Flaming Lips singer Wayne Coyne is born
1961: The Supremes sign a world wide recording contract with Motown Records.
1964: ‘Ring Of Fire’ by Johnny Cash becomes the first country album to go to No.1 on the US album chart.
2003: Singer-songwriter Maurice Gibb from the Bee Gee’s dies aged 53.
2008:  Radiohead top the album charts with the physical release of ‘In Rainbows’, originally sold via the internet for a price chosen by fans.

We love The Roots, and have been fans since Organix came out in 1993. While The Roots are by no means a new music discovery, Undun is their latest album (released December 6, 2011) and is just so beautiful that we had to share it will you all. And, who knows – The Roots could totally be a new discovery for you. We won’t hold it against you. Okay, maybe a little.

Undun is the 13th studio album from the Philadelphia based hip hop/neo-soul band that tells a story about a semi-fictional character named Redford Stephens, a poor youth from Philadelphia who sadly falls into the tumultuous world of the drug trade. Undun chronicles Stephens’ journey from the moment he surrenders to the game through it’s inevitable end.

Super cool facts about Undun:

• The album ends with a short suite of pieces based on Sufjan Stevens‘ song “Redford (For Yia-Yia  & Pappou)” from his album Michigan (we love Sufjan, too).
• There is an Undun App!

Our favorites from Undun include “Make My”, “Kool On” and “Lighthouse”.

Check out the official video for “Make My” below. What do you think? Please share your comments, we really want to know!

This is a friendly heads up that we’ll be performing scheduled server maintenance from 9:00PM (PST) until 10:00PM (PST) tonight, Thursday, January 19, 2012.

During this time, TuneUp’s services will not be available. We apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause, and we thank you for your patience as TuneUp get a tune up.

Cheers!
The TuneUp Team