BeaTunes

If you have an iPod, chances are you've also installed iTunes and watched as it's collided with your music collection. But it doesn't have to be that way - no matter what Apple may have you believe, the two aren't joined at the hip.

For the obsessively organised, the library inspection feature of beaTunes will be a delight. This analyses your iTunes audio library and makes a note of discrepancies, such as same artist but different genre or songs deleted on the hard drive that remain listed, and rectifies them. But its main purpose is to build better playlists in iTunes. It will analyse the beats per minute, silences at the start or end of song, and even apply colours to every track. Now you can group songs together in playlists according to the colour assigned, and end up with tracks that really do go well together. The average iTunes library will take a good few hours to analyse the first time, so overnight is a good option.

Author: Davey Winder