14 DAY TRIAL // Everyone with a strong taste for music eventually share a problem: not enough space. Instead of resorting to the natural solution of filtering songs, users may opt for Tenorshare's Music Cleanup for a simpler one, by finding and removing duplicates automatically.
This highly intuitive software application is relatively new on the market, and it comes with two modes for identifying music: scanning custom folders and removing duplicates from the disk, or looking into the iTunes library to delete entries from.
The app comes with other useful settings as well, like an ID3 tags editor and automatic filler.
The trial version of Music Cleanup does not impose major restrictions, since there is no expiration date.
It just limits the user to get ID3 tags for 10 songs, a feature that does not affect the primary goal: finding and removing duplicates. Unlocking the complete edition costs $29.95 / €24.
The main application window contains minimalistic visual elements and it is extremely simple to get around. Two buttons are accessible in the upper right corner of the screen, enabling users to toggle between the two cleaning modes: iTunes music, or files on the hard disk. The supported audio formats are MP3, M4A, APE, AAC, FLAC, WMA, WAV and OGG.
For each duplicate item found, Tenorshare highlights in red the total occurrences of the file (including the original one). The right side of the frame lists each identified item and automatically selects the duplicates for deletion (except for one to keep). Shown information includes the files' name, format, quality, song length, and tags. It is possible to open a track's location in Windows Explorer, as well as to load it in a built-in audio player (more details become available, such as sample rate and file size).
The secondary module dedicated to cleaning local audio duplicates can work with files from any location accessible from Explorer. The principle is the same, and files/folders can be added to the scanner using either the file browser or drag-and-drop support. Clearing duplicates means removing them from the drive.
The Good
Scanning the iTunes library or local files is done almost instantly, and the program retrieves accurate song information from online sources. Its built-in media player and tag editor make Music Cleanup quite attractive.
The Bad
In several scan jobs, we had to repeat the duplicate deletion process in both iTunes and local music modes in order to apply the new changes. Tag changes in the iTunes library are not always immediately registered (sometimes it is necessary to restart Music Cleanup).
Additional important settings are missing, such as a search function, skin customization, multiple languages, as well as the possibility of making the program fetch missing tags to apply them to all tracks at once.
The Truth
NOTE: For giveaway information, visit Tenorshare Music Cleanup's giveaway page.
