BeaTunes is approachable as a general music playback app while remaining a robust and novel DJ library management utility that is initially unassuming for the novice but still expansive and delightful for the veteran. Its interface has a distinctly Apple vibe with its familiar 3-pane setup making it easy to navigate, but it’s dotted tastefully with with helpful, colorful information throughout. The hallmark feature of beaTunes is its ability to analyze your music and display BPM, musical key, and ‘color’, which is analogous to the mood of the song. Songs of the same or similar color sound great together; very different colors will be more jarring when played back to back. These are the most basic bits of analysis that you can have performed on your music, but for the true audiophile that wants to emphasize the particulars, there is a world of granularity lying just under the surface.
Your first launch of beaTunes will be the most time-intensive one as it scans your library and analyzes each track with an ear for a series of information. beaTunes is an all-in-one master of your library, able to edit and update metadata as easily as it offers a semantic breakdown of a song’s structure. For the perfectionist DJ, volume levels are at hand to avoid any jarring volume transitions, song key is at hand to ensure a harmonious set, and color is made obvious to keep the mood going in the right direction. And for a user just trying to make an action or event specific playlist, beaTunes is the perfect option as it takes all the guesswork out of playlist creation, offering up great suggestions and crucial information to give you variety that works beautifully and seamlessly. Whether you need an iTunes library helper or a full-featured DJ library utility, beaTunes is poised to help just about anyone.
Please get rid of the front/back animation of covers, it is useless, very laggy and brings nothing except beachballing heartache. We live in the age of flat design not creepy make-believe 3D shadow land.
The more I use this software, the more frustrated I get. When I first downloaded it, I thought it was a really fresh way of looking at my music. What I needed was a way to look at the bpm and time signature of the tracks for Ice Dance. In an email exchange with the company, it turns out that the time signature algorithm does not work for most songs. It was not even working on tracks that were so obviously 3/4.
The other problem I have is how laggy it is. I am running this on a 4GHz Quad Core i7 with 16GB RAM and a 3TB Fusion drive. So it should be smooth. The problem is that when the software is running anything, the music controls grind to a halt. So, for example, I am currently looking for a roughly 100 bpm Christmas track for a skating number. I set the system to analyze a selection of holiday songs, and then tried to start listening to them as they BPM values filled in. You click the play button and then you have to wait for it to start. To go to the next track you have to click pause and wait longer for it to stop. It is so slow. If you want to change the volume you have to try and turn the microdot in the top right corner! Who could possible think that was a good idea!!! SLIDERS are the way to go!
On to matching! I wanted the software to match tracks from my holiday library to Blue Christmas (95bpm). So, I set up the matching and nothing happened. So I switched to the whole library and it was fine. So I added the "Holiday" Genre and all the songs went away. In the end I went to iTunes, selected Smart Playlist (Genre and BPM Range) and I was done in seconds.
Do not make the same mistake I did. Test the software carefully before you hand over your $35! If I had known the time signature algorithm was little more than a "joke" I would not have bothered. I'm going to try again later when I've calmed down a bit and emailed the company for help, but right now I am very frustrated with it. If I figure out the matching I will post an update!
Kudos to the developer for turning around this project. Thanks for bringing the app up to speed, so Java that is embedded is up to date. 4.5 stars, lost .5 stars for waiting to be called out on the problem before addressing. :)
I have been using this App for several years and find it indispensable. My iTunes music library, over 40,000 tunes, would have grown totally out of control without the beaTunes and the great inspection function it has. In addition the Analysis function is key to identifying additional characteristics for each tune and in developing outstanding playlists.
Support is very responsive and extremely knowledgable so that you get fast responses and responses that address any issue you might have without a long string of back and forth conversation.
Thanks for this great App.
Cliff
Another new version of MacUpdate.com. What’s wrong, near total monopoly not good enough for ‘ya?
Used to be that mousing over any of the 'Similar Software' superimposed over each app’s icon its short description, price and rating — what happened to that? I’m sure as hell not going to click on each app’s icon and visit its MacUpdate page just to learn those admittedly important bits of info, so this is an obvious and rather large DOWNGRADE of this site’s capabilities, no?
This software needs to have its error handling revamped. They need to IMMEDIATELY supply a 64bit version that actually uses my system memory (i have 12 gigs of ram + swap but this shitty software only uses 1280 m or so = 10% of availiable memory) and it constantly chokes on having to little memory availiable. It is highly unstable and when it crashes you don't even get an onscreen message it just sits on the screen looking just as if it is still working)
I needed something to help me quickly (meaning over the course of a few days) analyze my entire music library before a DJ gig after transferring all of my music to a new hard drive. beaTunes was very efficient and fairly straightforward to use. It wasn't 100% accurate, but out of a library of several thousand songs it was easily in the 95th percentile for accuracy. I could live with that.
beaTunes even detects the key and tempo (BPM) of each song. Those features alone saved me several hours of tedious work. It's easy to sort music by genre, but a DJ needs more information than that. beaTunes did well by me - not perfect, but very, very good.
No ratings yet...as I am currently starting a test run with this software..... Gonna throw 240,000 MP3s at it and see what happens. Currently it is synchronizing with my music library. Throwing a few log entries out there as it works....but progressing nicely. Will add more as we go along.
I have been a Beatunes user since version 1 and I just purchased an upgrade license from v2 to v3.
I can't live without this soft. It saves hours of management of iTunes Library, fixing misspellings, genres, etc.
BPM function is great and having the (accurate) BPM information in Traktor's iTunes list is great !
A must-have for anybody who wants to manage iTunes Library without pain.
Macbook Pro 2.3 GHz - 10.6.8 - iTunes 10.3.1 with 1TB+ of music
Note: I meant to give 5 stars for features but for some reason it's stuck at 3?
beaTunes is one of the essential tools for anyone who wants to get the most out of their iTunes library and ver. 3 puts into the elite group of analysis tools. As a DJ, I find the key and bpm analysis to be extremely accurate and endlessly useful but anyone who love music and wants better ways to understand how to organize their library will find a lot of value with beaTunes.
I've been using it since 1.0 and one of the best things about beaTunes is the support of the developer, which I rate a 5+++. He really cares about the product and is always willing to help and to listen to user feedback.
Also, I've used beaTunes on Mac and Windows and it works identically, which is a positive result of the Java code base (don't let the Java codebase turn you off, it works very well).
It's very discouraging that Apple's needlessly restrictive policies have kept a well established app like beaTunes out of the Mac App Store. Let's keep supporting other avenues for Mac app distribution like MacUpdate!
beaTunes saved my library. After years of ripping cd's that were eventually stollen from my car. My only copies were in iTunes. After using another app that miss named half my collection I was able to use beaTunes to find and repair the damage that was done. I now have a clean iTunes library with no duplicates. Overall the small amount of money I paid for beaTunes has saved me thousands of dollars.
Another thing I really like is how the creator of beaTunes has passion for what he has created. He seems to always be on the look out for how it can be refined and improved. It brings a lot of comfort knowing this application that i think is a need to have for anyone with iTunes is being actively maintained.
beaTunes is indispensable for cleaning up tags where I have multiple ratings for the same songs, or little-used genres, misspellings, etc. It works directly with my iTunes database, so I don't need to drag-n-drop files onto it to analyze them. The only thing missing in my book is album art, but I use TuneUp for that work.
Developer is very responsive and puts out version updates with regularity.
@developer
The "mipcore" process launches multiple threads, and they keep running after all tasks are done, or even after beatunes quit altogether. They take 100% processor load and often keep running for so long for no apparent reason while the program should be idle and have to be force quit.
(OSX 10.6.2 / 2.1 - 2.1.1 - 2.1.2)
"Replace existing song properties" was the biggest mistake one can make. It split most of my CDs into several pieces, a few songs in each. Now I don't even know where to start fixing this mess, library looks like a war zone.
This is an astonishingly powerful and useful program. I have other programs to fix problems with my iTunes songs and library (Media Rage and Jaikoz) but nothing that I know of does the kind of intelligent fixing that beaTunes does.
The BPM, color, key matching/manipulating feature are amazing, and again, unique, so far as I know. This program gives you the horsepower to make some truly amazing playlists, discovering relationships between songs you'd never think of yourself, but when you hear, they make total sense.
The program is easy to use, and fun to use. Some of the features, like determining the BPM for songs, can take time the first time this is determined, but the more you use it, the "smarter" your iTune library becomes, so to speak. You really can make some amazing correlations, and learn a lot about the music you have.
Be warned, though, the program's addictive! You can spend hours having fun with your music and learning all about it. I've made some of my most enjoyable and fascinating playlists with this program, plus beaTunes does all the mundane kinds of fixing that the other song maintenance programs I have do. If you consider the "smarts" of this program, and all it's features, I think it's well worth the price if you're a music buff.
beaTunes 2.0
I get the impression they want $31.00 more if you want to use 2.00. That's a lot of money when you use it sparingly and just paid off the last version.
I short; there should be an upgrade price and not 'one size fits all.
I'm unhappy with this.
Charlie
in general there is a lot of potential, but also many shortcomings:
- I cannot tell the program to keep existing cover art even if the program wants to add another one. I either have no art and get a new one or I have to let it overwrite what is there. Ever heard that there can be multiple covers in a file?
- it is crash king! I had to turn off the "update when closing" function, as I nearly always lost all of my changes at the end, because the program crashed when writing back the data to iTunes.
If this becomes more stable and a bit more intelligent I will certainly buy it!
There was a time when a 1 GHz computer was fast. Apparently it's not fast enough to make this app run at a reasonable speed. I finally got tired of watching it draw dialog boxes and crawl through analysis. Maybe I'll try it again when I next upgrade my Mac to an Intel. Oh well...
I've tried the trial version. I found it to be much more reliable in determining BPM than Tangerine. It is great to be able to create playlists to work out to, using the BPM information
Wow! I got the demo, found the program very intuitive to use, and have already started cleaning up my library. When we ripped our CD collection, my wife used a non-iTunes type program, and named all the songs in a funky way. beaTunes is fixing those song titles for us right now... What a great time saver! You'll see my order shortly., Thanks!
FYI, the developer is very responsive, I emailed today with a question, and had a response in less than 30 minutes, great customer service!
I tested beaTunes 1.2.3. on my iTunes Library at work. Looks like this would be a great software addition for my home computer, which holds over 10,000 songs that I have copy from CD's over the many years. Several songs have very little meta data i.e. Track 1, Track 2 etc. I think I will have to break out the pocket book on this one unless anyone can suggest a better option?
Tangerine isn't freeware anymore… I'm not sure about the cost, but I prefer the interface of Tangerine. BeaTunes has more advanced features though. It's more of a power-user tool as far as music apps go.
