TuneUp Brings Its iTunes Cleanup Wizard To The Mac

TuneUp, an iTunes plugin that helps correct wrong or missing song meta data and album art (and also offers a number of complementary features) has released a Mac-compatible version to the public.

We originally covered TuneUp last May (click here to see our full overview of the features), and since then not much has changed in terms of the plugin’s functionality. The application sits as a sidebar alongside iTunes, allowing users to simply drag and drop songs from their playlists into appropriate boxes to have their meta tags ‘cleaned up’ or cover art downloaded automatically. The sidebar also includes a panel called ‘Now Playing’ that features YouTube videos along with album and song recommendations related the song currently playing. Finally, there’s a tab for ‘Concerts’ which offers a listing of upcoming concerts in your area.

The free download includes 500 free song corrections (which fixes meta data and album art), as well as 50 free album art corrections (which just fixes album art and ignores meta data). After that, the service costs $12 for an annual subscription or $20 for a lifetime membership. Data lookup generally works well, and uses information licensed from Gracenote.

When we covered the Windows application earlier this year my biggest concern was that few people would be willing to pay for what for many will be a one-time fix – TuneUp does offer some value after fixing your library with its ‘Now Playing’ and ‘Concerts’ tabs, but most people are just concerned with cleaning up their libraries, which only needs to be done once. TuneUp’s Andrew Kippen says that while this was a major concern for the company, the conversion rate from free to paid users has actually been five times higher than expected (though he wouldn’t give any specific numbers).