Finding the Key

In the past two weeks a bunch of things have changed on the analysis front. I got to test the new key analysis algorithm from EA10 and as a result completely rewrote it. Accuracy of the results should be much better now. I also introduced a second BPM detection algorithm called SimpleSoundEnergy, which is generally faster than the original one, but not quite as accurate. This is hopefully great for folks who quickly want to scan huge collections and don't care as much about accuracy.

Of course I fixed a bunch of little things that are too tedious to list here. But you might want to know, that I added a couple of new inspectors. The amazon album version inspector lets you easily remove the (Album Version) suffix that Amazon likes to append to their mp3 titles. The rarely used genre inspector let's you find genres that are hardly used and maybe should be replaced by other genres. Lastly, I added an inspection that finds dupes with different ratings and lets you adjust them.

And here's the obligatory warning: Before downloading and installing this, please make sure you understand what Early Access means:

• Absolutely no warranty for whatever
• Features may or may not work, appear, and disappear
• It may not be possible to migrate data to future versions (even though we make a reasonable effort)
• This version will cease to function 2 weeks after its release
• You cannot buy this version

Just so that there is no doubt about it: EA11 isn't even a beta version.

And here are the download links:

• beaTunes-2-0-0-EA11 (OS X)
• beaTunes-2-0-0-EA11 (Windows)

Note for EA10 users

There will be some updates to the database. Make sure the analysis queue is empty before starting EA11 for the first time. If that is not possible, please note that BPM tasks that are still in the queue will probably fail.

Amazon MP3 starts going global this year

According to an official press release, Amazon MP3 will begin to offer its service globally this year. The company claims to be responding to thousands of emails from international customers, asking when the DRM-free MP3 store will open in their country.

While the press release states, that Amazon will start the international rollout this year, it does not give dates for individual countries, nor does it list the countries in which a store will actually open.

So even though the press release is somewhat preemptive - in the sense that it really only promises that at least one non-US store will open this year - this is very promising news for Amazon's international customers.

Since beaTunes can only analyze DRM-free music, this is also great news for beaTunes users.

Apple to lower iTunes Plus prices

Ars Technica is reporting that Apple will drop the price for DRM-free music to 99c per track. Apple had introduced DRM-free tracks under the label iTunes Plus earlier this year. The price drop seems to be a reaction to the newly opened Amazon MP3 store, which sells DRM-free music at a more competitive price.

beaTunes users benefit directly from DRM-free tracks, since they allow automatic analysis of their raw audio data.

Update: Apple officially announced today that it lowers prices to 99c.

AnywhereCD's for $7

While Amazon just launched its new MP3 store, AnywhereCD is going out of business. Why we are writing about this? Well, they happen to have a Going Out Of Business Sale. Each physical CD is sold for only $7.

Right now, that price certainly beats anybody else's prices. Get your tunes while they still have them...

DRM-Free MP3s from Amazon

Great news for iTunes users! Today Amazon went public with a beta version of their new MP3 shop dubbed Amazon MP3. The new service has over 2 million songs from more than 180,000 artists represented by over 20,000 major and independent labels. All files are 256kbps encoded DRM-free MP3s - which basically means they play in iTunes, on iPods, Zunes and pretty much any other player out there. According to the Amazon press release, most songs are priced between $0.89 and $0.99. Most albums are priced from $5.99 to $9.99.

For beaTunes users this means that they can now buy tracks at a decent price electronically without running into the DRM trap. This comes only a few months after Apple introduced a limited offering of DRM-free tracks to their music store for the premium price of $1.29 per track.

For both technical and legal reasons beaTunes cannot analyze the raw audio of DRM protected files.

Fullscreen Charts

For quite some time beaTunes had the album charts feature - basically displaying the album covers of the 70 albums with the highest Amazon salesrank. Of course you could choose a specific genre and the displayed genres and charts depended on the Amazon store you configured in beaTunes' general preferences. Something many people might have never noticed - the charts also automatically update themselves every hour.

So, what's so great about this? - you might ask. Well, we think it looks plain cool. And to make it look even better we added the fullscreen mode in beaTunes 1.2. By hitting that little button in the upper right corner, you can see the charts in their full beauty on your whole screen.

To make things even better, we also improved the mouse-over popups. They now feature the star ratings and if available the whole Amazon review.

Click on the images to see larger screenshots (800x600). Like it?

Disappearing Matches

Recently we received an email from a user who complained about matching songs that simply disappear. What happened?

As you all know, beaTunes matches songs with each other using rules. One of the rules is the Amazon rule: While beaTunes looks for matching songs, it queries the Amazon database for matching albums. Songs that belong to a matching album are ranked higher.

But getting the necessary information from Amazon takes some time. Therefore, beaTunes usually displays an initial result, before it queries Amazon. Then, after the Amazon results are in, the list of matching songs is updated.

The movie shows the effect: A song is selected and a number of matches are displayed. After a little while, most of the songs disappear. This happens, when the Amazon results are applied to the match algorithm.

Now, if you don't like this behavior, you can easily turn it off. Just open the preferences, select the Song Matching pane and uncheck the For faster results, ignore during the initial matching-checkbox. To disable the Amazon rule altogether, move the corresponding slider to 0.

We hope this tip helps you to enjoy beaTunes even more.