iTunes Tweaks, Tips + Contest!
iTunes is a great, free music player from Apple- but it is missing a couple of features that would be helpful. For instance, it lacks the ability to automatically remove duplicate tracks, and in a large music library, you are bound to have quite a few of those. Fortunately, for MacOSX users at least, there are quite a few Applescript programs that you can use to add functions. Check out the library, and especially this script which allows you to eliminate duplicate files.
OK, so it doesn’t work for Microsoft users. But, there is another hole in iTunes (the ability to automatically remove “dead” or missing files) that thankfully does have a PC solution out there. Check out the helpful idleTunes program, a small free utility that allows you to do a few cool things: find artwork for your albums, easily copy playlists to any MP3 device, and export playlists, in addition to the “remove dead tracks” checkbox. It can take a while, but works great- we tested it with the latest version of iTunes, 6.0.1.3.
Finally, iTunes doesn’t have near the number of plugins as some other players (say, Winamp), but it does have this new feature, a way to answer the question “What sort of music do you like?” Jason Freeman has created a method for using the iTunes library to make a short song sampled from your favorite/most played tracks. It’s called the Signature Maker and it works great! We’ve decided to post ours here, and hold a contest- the person who recognizes the most tracks from our signature file and emails us at admin at trulyobscure dot com- will win $10 via paypal! You must guess a track (artist and title), and incorrect answers will not count against you. Good luck, and check out our signature file here .
