Tagalicious is a $20 Mac application from the The Little App Factory (best known for their excellent DVD ripper RipIt), which will pick up your iTunes library metadata, fetch artwork, and still find lyrics. So far, it's been extremely impressive both in truth and price.
I had a Guns N' Roses song "1-01 Sweet Child O' Mine.
p3" with existing metadata saying it was the song "Sweet Child O' Mine" from their Greatest Hits album. Tagalicious said it was "Welcome to the Jungle." I played the charge in iTunes, and trusted enough, my metadata was wrong. It was "Welcome to the Jungle." I bear no thought how Tagalicious figured that out, but I suspect it is guilty of practicing witchcraft.
The current version 1.1 shows a big pile of promise, although it lacks some more advance features. Then again, that is what version 1.x releases are all about: get a solid foundation started, and so see where you want to grow. Read on for more details and information.
The port is a three pane window. On the remaining are your library and playlists (Smart Playlists included). In the heart are your songs. In the proper column is the old and new metadata. Select a song (or songs), click "Check All for Tags," and wait. Songs with found metadata show a badge in the top-right: a round with three dots. Songs that can't be changed or that aren't found show a badge of a set with an exclamation point.
While you could blindly trust Tagalicious to update all the metadata, I suggest checking through the results. I establish a few examples where it suggested changes that I didn't want. You can easily select which information you need to update and which you need to retain as-is. (You can even mix-and-match some new information with some old data, however you can't type in changes manually. When the data is as you'd like it to be, click "Send to iTunes," and the badge is changed to a checkmark.
I've been using Tagalicious for several hours, and piece it does make some rough spots (a few crashes here and there, usually when trying to see a great amount of files at once), it has very much impressed me. I'd say the art and metadata has been nearly 90-95% accurate. Tagalicious also supports lyrics, which is surprising since the disc companies have been aggressive in going after websites that compile lyric data. That said, the sport is pretty hit-or-miss. Some songs show complete lyrics, some are truncated, and some are simply not there at all.
Occasionally, I'll see a strain for which new metadata/cover art isn't found, even when other songs from the same album are. Currently, the mark for "Music" under Library includes podcasts and audibooks. I only wanted music files, so I made a smart playlist and set Tagalicious loose on that instead. I surmise that these and other minor nits will improve as the application is developed further.
The present version will let you check 50 songs before buying. I threw 50 of my most challenging files at it (ones that did not already have cover art or lacked some metadata), and it found results for 48 out of 50. Of those 48, maybe two to three contained some errors. That was adequate to get me to buy it. I have been using TidySongs, but it checks files one by one (rather than batch-lookup), which gets very tedious very fast. It keeps telling me that iTunes isn't responding. Supposedly, there is a new Windows version available, and a Mac version has been coming "real soon now" for a few weeks, but I got tired of waiting. Tagalicious works much, much better than TidySongs, and it's half the price. Plus, Tagalicious is a native Mac app instead of an Adobe Air app like TidySongs.
The price for a single computer is US$19.95 or $29.90 for a five-computer "family pack." (You can raise the single computer to a family license by merely paying the difference later. I keep my music on one computer, so that was sufficient for me. A single-computer license for Tagalicious is $50 cheaper than SongGenie ($30) and CoverScout ($40), and the household pack is $70 cheaper than SongGenie and CoverScout. Buying any form of metadata/artwork cleanup software is done to deliver you time compared to doing it all manually. SongGenie, CoverScout, and Tagalicious all have demos available for you to try before you buy. So far, I'm feeling pretty happy about the results I'm getting for a much better price.
Which reminds me, Tagalicious also offers a 10% discount via their Facebook page.
Despite some rough "version 1" spots that I trust will be smoothed out in time, Tagalicious seems like a nifty usefulness at a big terms as compared to the competition.
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