The music in my iTunes Library is a bit of a mess (correction; was a bit of a mess). Most songs had lots of missing information and I had album covers for about 5% of songs. It was annoying me so I needed a quick solution.
There are a few programs to sort your iTunes library out, but I thought I’d give FixTunes a whirl. At $25 a pop your iTunes needs to be pretty messed up to justify the cost, with 800+ songs in need of some sorting I thought it was worth it.
It is simple software you download on to your computer. Then you power up iTunes and also FixTunes. On the main menu you get 3 options:
- Fix One By One - to me this option defeats the point of the software somewhat. The time I’m going to save over going through each file manually isn’t worth the $25.
- Fix Automatically – this is by far the best option and exactly what the software is all about. You choose an “accurary %” and when the software matches a song based on the info already available it will fill the rest in for you.
- Find Duplicates – does what it says on the tin.
My Thoughts & Experience
The first thing that struck me was the speed, I used the “Fix Automatically” option and it slowly goes through each song and shows you the % match and whether it is making changes or not. So it does take a while to work its magic, ideally you need to leave it to do its job and leave your computer alone for a while.
I also made one mistake. There are options so you can choose what you want the software to fix. I just left everything checked (artist, album, year, artwork, genre, name & track) and it ended up creating a ridiculous amount of unnecessary categories (Enrique was listed in “European” for example, I want it in “Pop”! And how many variations of Indie can there be?). So later I had to go back and tidy up my genres which was annoying but my mistake.
The software also got a couple of songs wrong. For example it changed a song file by Akala, a British rapper, into Boy George. I did get a shock to see I had a Boy George song on my computer but soon figured it out!
Conclusion
To put it bluntly – FixTunes did the job I wanted to a decent standard. It is a bit slow and did get a couple of songs wrong. You also must be careful to check your options. So the software is not perfect, but if your iTunes was as messed up as mine it is definitely worth the money!
About Author: I have been a full-time blogger in the industry since September 2008. Connect with me via social media (sidebar).
The Software Does NOT Work!!!
Do Not Use FixTunes. This Software Will Mess Up Your Songs In A Big Way. All Of My MP3 Songs Are Now Mixed Up And Tag Wrong. All Of My WMA Songs Are Unplayable Now. All This Was Done With FixTunes. If Someone From The FixTunes Was Here Now I Would Kick There Ass. Its All About The Money.
My guess is that it tried to use MP3 tagging on a WMA file song rendering the file unreadable. I have emailed FixTunes but they will not respond. I lost over 4,000 songs and the ones that do work are missed tagged now. All my tags were correct before I just wanted the album art. More then 7 years of work lost.
The Software Does NOT Work!!!
I agree. Fixtunes does NOT work. Paid $25 dollars for crap. it get hung up and there is not customer support. when you submit a help request, they never respond.
Fixtunes is just a load of crap, moneymaking scheme. I mean I paid $25 for nothing, I lost 900 songs. Do NOT buy it.
Same here messed up 10,000 song collection. I know have 1,987 left and I can not restore them in any way. Years of collecting and now I am just so upset it is beyond belief. They supposedly rewrote the software so I thought why not I lost most of it already after downloading I tried to run the program and nothing works. Client server error ????? Stay far away!!!