We haven’t tried it yet, but I was just introduced to TuneUp. If you can believe the demo video below, looks like a pretty slick plugin. Available for both Windows and Macs, the program will clean up all the garbage in your iTunes folder. In other words, it will find all of the missing artwork, clean up tracks (ya know, the group in your library marked “Track 01, Track 02, etc”) and even fix all the multiple spellings of a particular artist (Black Crowes, THE Black Crowes, Black Crows, etc). I really like the concert feature as well.

So a sort of demo version is free, which gives you 100 track fixes, 50 album covers and unlimited concert reminders and related content. Or you can download the “unlimited everything” version for $30 lifetime or $20 per year. If anyone bothers to try this out, let us know how well it works. Maybe it’s easier to just hunt for missing album artwork on your own and drag and drop? That’s what I’ve been doing.

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Haven’t seen em live yet, but I bet it’s a riot. Cashing in (hopefully) on the recent zombie craze with the name of the band, they’re ridiculously easy to spontaneously begin dancing to. You can find a bunch of their music online that they’re giving out for free (see links below) – which proves that they actually understand new media and are smart folk. Dig it.

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Zombie Season:
MySpace
free music

I take a lot of shit from a lot of people because I like Coldplay. That is until I crack them in the jaw with iron fist and ninja like reflexes. In fact, I’m not afraid to admit that last year’s Coldplay record was one of my favorites on the year.

One more reason to like them? Just give them your email address and they’ll give you a free download of thir live album. I just did it and it took seconds. Anyway, if you want some free music by one hell of a melodic band, head over to Coldplay.com and get the hookup. Sounds like a good trade to me.

It’s a topic that can’t be ignored by the music lovers out there especially us in the younger generation growing up in the digital age: illegal downloading and file sharing. It’s so much easier and cheaper; but it is right? Everyone can ponder that question on their own, but I found a fabulous article/rant written by a guy named Rob at his blog, Demonbaby and decided to reprint it here so that we can have our own conversation on the topic (there are already a TON of comments over there and I don’t have time to dig into them all).

A little over two years ago I was invited to join an online file sharing community known at the time as OiNK. It was an incredible community of people all sharing only top quality music .torrents and lots of them. If ever an album was needed, you could be sure to find it on OiNK (likely weeks before its actual release). They had everything… EVERYTHING. Their community was by invitation only and their rules for uploading and sharing were extremely strict. Hence, you knew everything you were getting was top quality and safe. Then last year the “headquarters” was raided and OiNK was no more. My record “collection”, but more importantly an outlet for gaining musical knowledge and discovery, suffered tremendously.

In its stead was this terrific article that I read all the way through and learned a lot about the world of illegal downloading and the stupid stupid world of the record execs and studios – complete with a nice little history lesson. It is a ridiculously long article, but fascinating, entertaining and fairly well written by a guy who seems to actually know what the hell he’s talking about. It completely changed how I look at file sharing and my guilt (or lack thereof) for participating in it.

Some of the info in here isn’t really new and some of it might be a bit outdated by now, but check it out anyway. It’s a fabulous read (if you have time).

see the full article under the cut…
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