New York Times mentions beaTunes for BPM detection

In its Personal Tech Q&A column, the New York Times recently pointed to beaTunes as a tool for detecting the BPM of your iTunes songs.

Thanks, NYT! We appreciate it!

Problems with iTunes 7.3.1 and QuickTime 7.2

A couple of days ago Apple released iTunes 7.3.1 and QuickTime 7.2.

beaTunes works fine with both new versions, if they are installed correctly. Unfortunately it looks like the iTunes/QuickTime update procedure doesn't always work the way it should. Long story short - some of you might have encountered the following error when starting beaTunes:

A fatal error occurred during initialization: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError:quicktime/internal/jdirect/Linker

If you are on OS X, you will need to re-install QuickTime. Just download it from Apple. Install it. Things should be fine.

If you run Windows, re-install beaTunes, try whether it works, if not, re-install QuickTimes and re-install beaTunes again.

If you are still encountering issues, please email our support.

Non-DRM songs now on iTunes

With the new iTunes 7.2 out today, Apple starts to sell non-DRM music provided by EMI. As mentioned earlier, the songs are sold for $1.29 a piece. Apple dubbed the new offering iTunes Plus.

By the way, as Erica Sadun has been quick to point out, just like the DRM-cousins, non-DRM files purchased from iTunes have the buyer's account name embedded...

In another press release Apple also announced iTunes U, offering lectures from leading US universities for free.

beaTunes top tool for managing iTunes

beaTunes has just been named top tool for managing iTunes libraries on the Mac by tech writer Ryan Faas.

In his article he describes the beaTunes inspection feature extensively. Then he concludes:

Its capability to identify major errors in the way songs are tagged—as well as to help you find new ways of looking at your music and its capability to automate the creation of playlists—make beaTunes an great iTunes helper.

Apple will sell non-DRM music soon

Apple will start selling non-DRM music provided by EMI in May. That's the bottomline of a press release published yesterday by Apple Inc. The songs will be higher quality (256 kbps AAC, as opposed to 128 kbps AAC) and $0.30 more expensive.

This is great news for beaTunes users, since until now Apple's DRM system Fairplay prevented them from analyzing their own music.

Artists like The Rolling Stones, Beastie Boys, Janet Jackson, Mando Diao, etc. are all signed by EMI.

Update iTunes Messagebox

A number of people kindly wrote us to let us know that since the recent iTunes 7.1.1 update, beaTunes asks people to update to iTunes 7.0.2. Of course that's a faulty error message and it can safely be ignored. We will post an update soon that fixes this issue.

iTunes 7.1 is out

On 3/5/07 Apple released version 7.1 of iTunes. The probably coolest new feature is the full screen Cover Flow. Apple definitely took a step in the right direction. You've got to check it out!

The iTunes update also includes an update of QuickTime to version 7.1.5. If you are using beaTunes on Windows, you might need to re-install beaTunes, should you run into any problems. Mac users should not have any problems.