I also wanted to put in another positive word for MusicBrainz. Not a good interface, but it works well (YMMV since music data can be so varied) and is free. I combine it with a separate file-deduper utility, but that’s because I’m comfortable with that level of PC micro-management.

Also, just pointing out that this post was a plug that came after a service was provided to the poster (and was then followed up by a comment from the developer). This isn’t necessarily bad. I assume David paid for the service. If he didn’t, perhaps that should be noted.

A large music library, by my definition, is greater than 1,000,000 tracks or 2 TB of data.

150GB of music is not a large music library.

“Gillian Welch” is the name of a two-person band that happens to include a person named Gillian Welch. G or W? And on and on.

What I would like to be able to to is tell iTunes that different names point to the same artist, like ACRES = Tim Acres. I would also like to have it show me “Chester and Lester” under both Chet Atkins and Les Paul or “The Notorious Cherry Bombs” under Rodney Crowell and Vince Gill. I know I there are ways to hack this with existing tags, but that’s a PITA.

Wow, sounds great! I never wanted this stinking “soul” thing holding me back, anyway. Where do I sign up, and what other marvellous shiny lickable chains might Warden Jobs sell me? (This prison cell would be sooooo much nicer if the bars on the window had some sort of novelty interface!) Perhaps if I pay Mr Jobs twice what I pay that nasty Warden Gates, he’ll let me give him all my music and other audio recordings to look after as well. (Warden Gates’ guards are much ruder than nice Warden Jobs’ guards. They only hung me the right way up yesterday….)

Ummmm….. Did you read my post?

the best method i’ve instituted is to load mp3s into a blank playlist then organize the id3 tags as clean as possible. once everything is ready i simply delete the playlist and all of the tracks are organized properly in the library.

a little preproduction saves a lot of time and headaches in the future. i only wish my wife would follow suit. many years of no organization means five copies of every album ever made complete with misspelled tracks and artist names; it’s infuriating. thanks to auto sync attempting to navigate through her ipod is even worse!

Guest speaker privilege.

As I said in my post, I didn’t actually try the software myself. Gabe (a friend, as I disclosed) ran it on my hard drive before it was commercially released. There was also a free Beta program for the last few months.

@IMIPAK (#37), How about we, er, don’t bet but instead both donate the $50 to charity. : ) Point taken.

…they’re planning to open up the “Now Playing” API so anyone can create their own contextual content features.

and yes! yes, I did. (I won’t try to weasel out of admitting it by pointing that “the vendor tells me that…” doesn’t really stack up against “here’s the source, it works today, it was working last year and the year before that”. That would be lame, and I’d sound like some sort of freetard.

However (yes, of course there’s a “…and another thing!” – you think my rep as just another flamey troll writes itself?) … however… why would anyone write “free” (gratis) plugins for a commercial product, to help someone else make money and take all the benefit? I’ll put some real folding cash, say $50, down to a charity of your choice if there are more plugins for this thing than there are for Amarok in, say, a year’s time. (Note – plugins you have to pay the programmer for don’t count.) Deal?

I’m hoping that the phrasing in your post was incorrect and they meant that the “correct rate is 100 percent” with an 85-90 tracks being in the database.

What my library needs is smart and robust dupe detection, and relinking and/or deletion of tracks not stored in the main library.

I would try this service but my mp3s are mostly OOP vinyl rips. I doubt the albums are in their database, some do not even turn up in Google.

The snozzberries taste like snozzberries.

Probably fine for folks who just listen to cuts off of well-known albums, I’d guess, but thanks anyway.