TuneUp, the app that cleans up your iTunes and Windows Media Player library (by correcting song information, providing missing cover art, and more), seemed to reach the end of the road last month with the shutdown of TuneUp Media. It turns out, however, that founder Gabe Adiv wasn’t willing to let it die.
Adiv said he resigned as CEO of TuneUp Media last June. But after the company ceased operations, Adiv founded a new business, GMGP LLC, acquired the assets to TuneUp (as well as hiring some of the team members), and relaunched with an older version of the app last Friday (version 2.48, to be specific).
Why will this succeed where the previous company seems to have failed? While I’ve written about the app before, I hadn’t followed the news recently. For one thing, it seems the release of version 3.0 last fall was a bit of a disaster, with lots of bugs.
Adiv declined to comment about what happened to TuneUp after he left, saying only, “I’m confident that the version of the software that we just relaunched with still serves a real need in the marketplace.”
His comment alludes to another question facing the company: Does the shift towards services like Pandora and Spotify make the concept of a personal music library less relevant? You can probably tell that Adiv doesn’t think so. “None of the consumption models are exclusive,” he argued, adding that he’s hoping to integrate with other music services in the future.
Adiv said he has other ideas for improvements, but the company has to “make sure that the product performs its core competencies and stays stable.” He also said the company will continue to support the existing mobile app (which was focused on identifying songs, Shazam-style), but there are no plans to develop it further.
GMGP was funded by outside investors and Adiv himself. He declined to say how much he raised or from whom. But again, from a consumer perspective, the new company should be pretty much invisible; TuneUp is the brand that they know, and it’s what they’ll continue to see.
“Ultimately I’m just really excited to be able to support those users that supported TuneUp for so long,” Adiv said. “I think it would be a shame for the best product in the market to just disappear.”
As part of the relaunch, TuneUp is offering a 30 percent discount to people who use the promo code RELAUNCH14 when they buy the app.