Clean icon

Clean fixes music in your collection that has missing or mislabeled information (like track title, artist, genre, release year, etc). Drag-and-drop as many songs as you'd like from iTunes or use "Send to" in WMP to clean, verify results, and click "Save" to change the MP3 metadata.

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Overview

To clean mislabeled music:

  1. Click on the Clean icon in the top menu bar.
  2. Select the songs you want to clean in iTunes or WMP. (Figure 2)
  3. iTunes: Drag-and-drop these songs into TuneUp.
    WMP: Right-click on these song in WMP and select Send to --> TuneUp (Figure 3)
  4. TuneUp will immediately begin fingerprinting your music to find matches.

The song identification process typically takes 3 - 5 seconds per track. However, speed is greatly influenced by your computer performance and environment. In order to identify songs, TuneUp must first find the song on your hard disk drive, decompress it and create a uniquely identifiable acoustic fingerprint. Then TuneUp sends the fingerprint to the online reference database and sorts through multiple matches before you begin to see results.

For these reasons, external USB drives and networked drives also tend to perform slowly. The size of your music collection also will have an impact as does the speed of your Internet connection.

Important Note for Windows Media Player users -- Windows Media Player can often disconnect the communication to its plug-ins. In these cases, you have to enable the TuneUp plug-in again in Windows Media Player. In WMP, you can do this by clicking the View menu item, then select Plug-ins --> Other --> TuneUp (Figure 4)

Lightbulb icon Tip #1 Use Shift-click to select multiple contiguous files in your media player.

Lightbulb icon Tip #2 Use Ctrl-click to select multiple separated files in media player.

Lightbulb icon Tip #3 TuneUp works best when you look up entire albums at the same time as it greatly helps to identify which is the original album these songs came from.

Matches & Saving

As TuneUp processes each track, the results are merged into albums and given a confidence rating: results with a high confidence rating are placed in the "Matches" bin, and results with a medium confidence rating are placed in the "Likely Matches" bin. (Figure 5).

Steps to saving the metadata to your MP3 files:

  1. Hover over the album art result and click the arrow to expand it. You'll have up to four album cover choices to apply. Click the magnifying glass (Figure 6) to expand the album art result and see its resolution.
  2. Select/unselect songs that you'd like to save metadata for by checking or unchecking the box to the left the song name. (Figure 7)
    • To double-check accuracy, you can play the songs by clicking the play button to the right of each track title. (Figure 7)
  3. To save individual metadata fields (e.g. save Artist name but not Genre), click the ellipsis (three dots) icon in the Album result and uncheck the fields that you do not want to save. (Figure 8)
  4. To clear a result, click the "X" icon next to the fields you don't want to save (eg. Artist name) (Figure 8).
  5. Click the Save button (floppy disc icon) to save results back to your media player.

Lightbulb icon Tip #1 TuneUp will tell you if you're missing any songs from an album by listing them in gray. Click the arrow next to these results to buy the track from iTunes. (Figure 9)

Lightbulb icon Tip #2 An entire bin can be expanded and collapsed by clicking the icon next to the bin name.

Lightbulb icon Tip #3 If your songs already contain cover art, Clean will NOT overwrite them. If you would like to replace the existing cover art, remove it from iTunes first by selecting the files and clicking Ctrl-I.

Lightbulb icon Tip #4 When TuneUp has difficulties saving metadata or cover art, the Match Result will turn red (Figure 10). There are two main reasons this will occur: 1. TuneUp can't retrieve the selected cover art. To resolve, select a different cover art result from the four presented. 2. The music files are write-protected (read-only). To resolve, change the properties to make them writeable.

Normalizing results

When cleaning songs from the same album, TuneUp can often mis-identify a single song from the album. The result is that most songs are in one Album result and a single, straggler song is in a second Album result. To fix this, you can drag-and-drop the song from the wrong result onto the right result. Follow these steps

  1. Click on the arrows to the left of the album names on the two results so you can see all the songs in both albums (Figure 11) .
  2. Drag the (wrong) result that you'd like to normalize onto the correct result (should be greyed out). (Figure 12). As you drag, you'll see the track name move along with the cursor.
  3. If you accidentally drop on the wrong track (before saving), just drag that bad track to where you want it or back to the original track.
  4. If you drag-and-drop onto the wrong track and have already saved, the Undo function should work just like on other cleaned tracks.

TuneUp Playlists

As you Analyze and Clean, TuneUp creates various playlists (Figure 13) for you to quickly manage the cleaning process:

  1. After you Analyze, TuneUp creates a playlist called "Dirty". This playlist will include tracks that are missing at least one of the seven key metadata fields.
  2. Once you've drag-and-dropped songs to be cleaned from your media player into TuneUp, if any are not in our database, they are put in a playlist called "Not Found". You can periodically try these songs again to see if they have been added to our reference database.
  3. Finally, once you clean songs, they are put in a playlist called (surprise) "Clean". A new playlist is created for each category every time you go through the respective step.
Analyze icon

Undo reverts the songs you've cleaned with TuneUp back to their original metadata. If you've accidentally saved incorrect metadata, Undo can bring these songs back to their original state.

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Overview

  1. Launch Undo by clicking the back arrow in the top-right of Clean. (Figure 1)
  2. iTunes: Select the songs that you want to undo in your media player and drag-and-drop them into the Undo window.
    WMP: Select the songs that you want to undo in your media player, right-click on them and select Send to --> TuneUp to send them to the Undo window.
  3. Click the "Undo" button next to the tracks you'd like to revert (Figure 2) or click "Undo All" to revert all songs back to their original state.

Lightbulb icon Tip #1 You can only Undo songs that have been cleaned by TuneUp.

Lightbulb icon Tip #2 The Undo function does not remove any cover art that you have added (you have to do this manually in your media player).

Analyze icon

Analyze is a sub-feature of Clean that will conveniently let you know how many songs in your music collection have missing metadata (like track title, release year, genre, artist, album, etc.).

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Using Analyze

  1. Launch Analyze by clicking the brain icon in the top-right corner of the Clean tab. (Figure 1)
  2. Click the Analyze button to get started. Once processed, Analyze will display a diagnostic of your music collection. (Figure 2)
  3. Click the "Return to Clean" button to begin cleaning up all that dirty music.

Lightbulb icon Tip #1 TuneUp will create a playlist of the Dirty tracks that it found during Analyze - this is a great place to start your music clean-up. NOTE: You must turn on the preference to "Create Playlists" first (Figure 3).

Cover Art icon

Cover Art scans through your collection, identifies songs that are missing album art and then searches multiple web sources for artwork. You pick from up to four matches and save it back to your media player.

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Overview

  1. Click the Cover Art tab from the top menu bar. (Figure 1) TuneUp will immediately begin scanning your music library for missing album art. This process may take a few minutes depending on the size of your collection.
  2. Select the desired album cover from the four results found. (Figure 2)
  3. By hovering over the results, you can see the dimension (in pixels) of each result. (Figure 3)
  4. Click "Save" to apply the new cover art to the album in your media player.

Lightbulb icon Tip #1 Use "Save All" button if you'd like to save the first result of each album to all albums in the list view.

Lightbulb icon Tip #2 To view the image resolution on results, click that result so that it is displayed as the large result. Then, hover over the selected result and click the magnifying glass. (Figure 2)

Lightbulb icon Tip #3 Use the refresh button in the top right of Cover Art if you've added songs to your media player after launching TuneUp or added album art using Clean. This will sync up Cover Art with your media player's library. (Figure 1)

Lightbulb icon Tip #4 Cover Art only displays results for songs that have both Album name and Artist metadata. If a track from your collection doesn't show up in the Cover Art tab, it is because it is missing one of these two key metadata items. In these cases, use the Clean function to get the missing metadata and cover art

Tuniverse icon

Tuniverse presents you with the best music content from the web contextualized around what's playing in your media player: music videos from YouTube, recommendations, artist bios from Wikipedia, merch from eBay and more.

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Overview

  1. Play any song in your media player and click the Tuniverse tab in the top-right menu bar. (Figure 1)
  2. You can change the placement of any widget by mousing over the top of the widget (the cursor will change) and dragging-and-dropping it into its desired position in Tuniverse.
  3. Click the arrow next to the title of each widget to collapse or expand it.

Videos

  1. Click the thumbnail with the play icon to start playing any video within TuneUp.
  2. Click the video title (hyperlinked text) to see the video in your web-browser.

Bio

  1. TuneUp will automatically display a biography for the artist that is currently playing in your media player.
  2. Click the text links at the bottom of the widget to read more.

Concert Notifications

  1. The Concert Notifications widget will automatically display any concert in your area for the artist currently playing.
  2. Change your location by clicking the "Change" button. (Figure2)

Album Recommendations

  1. Click the "more" button to read a review (if available) (Figure 3).
  2. Click the "Buy" button to purchase a recommended album from Amazon.

Twitter

  1. You must first sign in to the Twitter widget using your Twitter login password.
  2. The Twitter feed has two modes: Manual and Auto. For Manual, you can enter a short message and then click the "Tweet" button (Figure 4). For Auto, you can have the widget tweet every song change, every album change or every artist change.(Figure 5) Be careful -- auto-tweeting can spam your twitter feed!

eBay

  1. The three eBay widgets show you live auctions in the top three music categories: Tickets, Merchandise (e.g. Posters, t-shirts, ticket stubs) and Music (mostly used CDs and vinyl).
  2. Note that the pricing shown in the display is slightly delayed and may be higher once you click the link to load the auction in your default browser.

Lightbulb icon Tip #1 The Concert Notification feed updates once every day. If you recently added music to your collection, it might take some time before a new concert shows up.

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Concerts automatically displays local, upcoming concert notifications based on the artists in your music collection.

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Overview

Click the Concerts tab in the top-right menu bar (Figure 1) to get started.

When launched, Concerts reads through all of the artists in your music collection and displays upcoming concert listings for your location.

Change Location

Change your location by clicking the "Change" button next to the default city, state and country. (Figure 2) Enter the new city, state and country and click the Save button. (Figure 3)

Refresh

Although Concerts routinely re-scans your library for new artists, click the "Refresh" button in the top right to update your results.

Lightbulb icon Tip #1 Click on the ticket supplier's icon/name to purchase tickets.

Update icon

Update is TuneUp's built-in mechanism that notifies you when software updates are available for you to download and install.

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Overview

TuneUp has a built-in mechanism that notifies you when updates are available for you to download and install. These updates include new features, bug fixes and performance enhancements.

PC: Check for Update

You can check for updates by right-clicking on the icon in the systray (bottom-right of your screen) and selecting "Check for Update". This runs the Updater, which connects to the TuneUp servers and looks for any new available components. (Figure 1)

PC: Updating

When an update is available, the Updater will notify you of the features of the new update (Figure 2) and will step you through the downloading and installation process.

Mac: Check for Update

You can check for updates by: right-clicking anywhere in TuneUp OR clicking the TuneUp icon in the top menu (finder) bar. Select "Check for Update". (Figure 3) This runs the Updater, which connects to the TuneUp servers and looks for any new available components.

Mac: Upgrading

When an update is available, the Updater will open a dialogue box (Figure 4) to download and install. When the update has been downloaded, TuneUp will close and guide you through the installation process.

Lightbulb icon Tip #1 iTunes upgrades might affect TuneUp's operation. If you are having issues with TuneUp after recently upgrading iTunes, visit the TuneUp Support Forum for help.

Preferences icon

Preferences allows you to configure TuneUp's features and interface elements.

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Overview

The Preferences menu allows you to make changes to how TuneUp functions and lets you edit your profile settings.

Launching Preferences

There are two ways to reach Preferences. The simplest is to click the Ellipsis (three dots) in the user interface (Figure 1). Otherwise, you can launch Preferences from the application menus as follows:

PC: Right-click on the TuneUp icon in the system tray (right side of the Windows taskbar) to open the menu and then click Preferences. (Figure 2)

Mac: Right-click anywhere within TuneUp or click on the TuneUp in the system bar. (Figure 3)

Main Preferences

In the Main Preferences menu (Figure 4) you can:

  • Turn off Help tips
  • Disable auto-launch with iTunes or WMP
  • Select your default tab (the first tab that you will see when TuneUp launches)
  • Change your language (currently, TuneUp is available in English, French, Spanish, Italian and German)
  • PC ONLY: Change from iTunes to Windows Media Player (Figure 5)

Clean Preferences

There are several options that can be found in the Clean section of the Preferences menu that TuneUp uses to clean your music library (Figure 6):

Try not to tag to compilations

By default, when cleaning songs with little metadata or as singles, TuneUp will identify a song but have a hard time figuring out which album it came from. In these cases, TuneUp favors compilations (Greatest Hits) albums over the original album. By selecting this option, if TuneUp finds a Greatest Hits or Compilation album as a result, it will do a secondary search to try to find the original album. NOTE: This feature currently only works about 50% of the time and it can produce errors (false positives). It also takes more processing resources and time to complete.

Write "Cleaned by TuneUp!" in ID3 comment tag

With this option, TuneUp will write "Cleaned by TuneUp!" in the ID3 comment tag. This gives you an easy way to see what tracks in your collection have already been cleaned by TuneUp. You need to show the Comments column in iTunes. You can do this by right-clicking on the grid header and checking Comments from the pull-down menu.

Remove "featuring" and "feat." From Artist

With this option, you can remove the "featuring" portion of the Artist name field. For example, the song "LAX" by Snoop Dogg will be listed with the artist as "Snoop Dogg Feat. Ice Cube." When you select this preference, the Artist name will just appear as "Snoop Dogg". Note -- this feature doesn't catch all variations

Merge artists names with "And", "&" and "and"

Many artists have put out albums with various backup bands or supporting artists. Turning this feature on will modify the Artist name by normalizing everything starting with "and", "&" and "And" into a single one (and). For example, "Bob Marley & the Wailers" and "Bob Marley And the Wailers" will appear as "Bob Marley and the Wailers" when cleaned. Note -- this feature doesn't catch all variations

Normalize Album endings with "(disk #)", "[CD #]" or variations

This preference helps some anomalies that occur with Mult-disk sets where one disc will show up with, for example, as "disc 1" and then "CD2". In this case, the second disk will show up before the first in your media player. This feature normalizes them to all have [disk ##]. Note -- this feature doesn't catch all variations

Clean Playlists

This preference will create Playlists in your media player for various activities -- Clean (for all songs you clean), Not Found (songs that were not identified by the Clean process which you can then easily find to clean at a later date hoping our database has added them) and Dirty (created by the Analyze feature with a list of songs that are missing some primary metadata and should be cleaned)

Save Metadata Defaults

Check the fields that you want Clean to save by default and uncheck those that you don't (Figure 7). For example, if you customize your Genre fields and you don't want them overwritten by TuneUp, simply uncheck the "Genre" field.

Profile Preferences

Use the Profile preferences menu (Figure 8) to manage your email address, password, location (used only for Concerts) and what kind of email updates you'd like to receive from TuneUp.

Share icon

Share allows you to show the rest of the world interesting and cool aspects of your music life and listening habits by posting newsfeeds on Facebook (you must have a Facebook account).

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Overview

When you first click on the Share icon, TuneUp scans your music collection and displays various lists of your favorite music: your favorite songs (most played), favorite albums (most played) and favorite artists (most songs in collection) (Figure 1). Any of these three pieces of information can be shared on Facebook by clicking the Share button next to each list. It will create post in your Facebook Newsfeed listing the details (Figure 2).

Allowing TuneUp to publish to your Facebook newsfeed

The first time you use TuneUp's Share feature you will have to allow TuneUp to publish to Facebook. This process happens entirely on Facebook. The first time you click any of the Share buttons, TuneUp will open up Faceboook in your default browser. If you are not already logged into Facebook, you'll be taken to the login screen (Figure 3). Once logged in, you'll be asked to "Allow" TuneUp to publish to your newsfeed (Figure 4). Once you allow, you can close down the confirmation browser window (Figure 5) and return to TuneUp. Click the Share button again to post the information to your newsfeed.

Shared items on your newsfeed

A post on your newsfeed will list the Top 5 items with images (Figure 6). Each item in the list of the post on your Facebook Newsfeed links to more information about each item on Tuniver.se -- http://tuniver.se

Sign Out

If you no longer plan to use the Share tab, you can sign out by clicking the Sign Out button at the bottom right.

Lightbulb icon Tip #1 When you first click Share and presented with the Allow screen on Facebook, you only have 60 seconds to accept before the request times out.