Pollux tags your music files in iTunes so you don't have to
Pollux is a new Mac OS X application by Chetan Surpur and Shashwat Kandadai that will automatically tag your music files in iTunes. It is capable of tagging the name, artist, album, album art, genre, year, and lyrics for each song, and it does so by analyzing the song's audio fingerprint. This means that it can draw on a database of tag information, and do so very accurately, even if the song has no identifying information at all to begin with.
To use Pollux, you select songs in iTunes, then from the Pollux icon in your menu bar, choose Tag Selected iTunes Tracks. Tagging can take a little while, so don't expect instant results. In my testing I found tags to return in anywhere between 15 and 60 seconds. Tagging an entire library this way could certainly take some time, but since it's all automated, why not? There is also an option in Pollux to automatically tag any new music that is imported into iTunes.
There are other applications that do similar things, but Pollux sets itself apart by being both unobtrusive and free. Pollux is still in beta, so you might experience a problem here and there, though in my limited testing it was solid.












Comments
3
Subscribe to commentsMaxxOct 5th 2009 6:00PM
Unless I missed out on the option, the changes are without confirmation. I had music that was having strange results. Such as genres been different for same artist on the same album. Some entries having values such as "My favorite song" or "Good music" etc... Complete freeze on large selections...
It would be a great tool if you could confirm before applying. Otherwise it is quite a big leap of faith...
jesterpaulOct 5th 2009 6:35PM
I risked it, and regret it.
I set it to tag my entire iTunes library which took about 24 hours, and it mislabeled about 10% of my tracks completely. Imagine a Perfect circle track being labeled as an Anthrax track!
Use with caution!
TICOOct 14th 2009 10:36AM
UPDATE: It seem the app has becomed more popular to the point where the owners are having trouble to keep the depending services working until further notice.
Let's hope all the best for them and may the app be available again.
Cheers!