FAQ

1. General
2. Installation
3. Using beaTunes
4. Technical

General

1. Is beaTunes freeware?
2. beaTunes claims that there is a newer version available. What now?
3. I paid for a license, but never received the key. What happened?
4. I lost my license key. Can you mail it to me again?
5. My version of beaTunes is expired. What now?
6. Something does not work. Where can I get support?
7. I like beaTunes. How can I make sure it's still around in a year?
8. Where can I find out more about BPM detection?
9. What BPM is suitable for what kind of fitness workout?

Is beaTunes freeware?

No. beaTunes is shareware.
After the free trial period you will have to purchase a license, if you want to continue using beaTunes.

beaTunes claims that there is a newer version available. What now?

Just download the new version and replace the old one. Your 1.w.x license will cover all updates that have the same major version number, i.e. all 1.y.z versions.

I paid for a license, but never received the key. What happened?

Our license key email probably got caught in your spam filter. So before you contact us, please make sure to check your spam/junk folder for email from either the tagtraum.com or the beatunes.com domain.

If you cannot find it in your spam folder, try our lost key form.

If the form fails, too, please contact us.

Note, that if our emails to you are filtered out by your spam filter, we have no way of communicating with you. This means that if you contacted us via email and we answered, you might never receive our answer due to your spam filter.

I lost my license key. Can you mail it to me again?

Please use our lost key form.

If you are unable to get to your key using the form, please contact us.

My version of beaTunes is expired. What now?

If you are using a trial version:

Buy a license.

The license key will be emailed to you. Then start beaTunes and enter the license information into the registration dialog. Should it not pop up automatically, go to the Help menu and select Register... then enter the license information.

If you are using an Early Access version, check this website for a new Early Access version or the final release.

Something does not work. Where can I get support?

If you cannot find a solution in this FAQ or the news section, please contact us at:

In your support request, please state the versions of beaTunes, iTunes, and OS X/Windows you are using. Furthermore, please let us know how many songs are in your library and what hardware you are running. Often the log files from ~/Library/Logs/beaTunes/ or c:\Documents and Settings\<username>\.beaTunes\logs\ are also very useful to us.

I like beaTunes. How can I make sure it's still around in a year?

Buy it!
Tell your friends to buy it.
Rate and review beaTunes on MacUpdate, Freshmeat, Softpedia (osx|win) VersionTracker (osx|win), Tucows (osx|win), Download.com (osx|win), etc.
Blog about it.
Bookmark it.
Spread the word.

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Where can I find out more about BPM detection?

Marcelino Martins has a good overview page about BPM Detection.

What BPM is suitable for what kind of fitness workout?

This highly depends on your workout and your goals. However, there are a number of sites and resources dedicated to working out to music, specifically with an iPod:
Making the iPod's BPM work for your BMI
fitMusic
Cardio May Be a Waste of Time Without This Knowledge
Half time - music guidelines for aerobic workouts - AFXX Professional Edge
There is also the Nike + iPod Sport Kit, which might be of interest to you.

Installation

1. How can I find out, which version of OS X I am using?
2. How can I find out, which version of Windows I am using?
3. Where can I get the right Java™ version?
4. How can I check, which Java™ version is currently installed on my system?
5. Can I run beaTunes with an older iTunes version that works with HYMN?
6. Installation on Windows fails with a message about QTJava or QuickTime. What now?

How can I find out, which version of OS X I am using?

Click on the apple symbol on the very left of your menu bar and select About This Mac. A dialog window pops up, showing the OS X version.

How can I find out, which version of Windows I am using?

There are multiple ways:
When you start your computer Windows displays its version.
When you click on the Start button, Windows should display its version vertically on the left of the popup menu.
Click on Start, then on Run, enter cmd, click OK. In the new window, enter ver and push the Enter key.

Where can I get the right Java™ version?

On Mac, beaTunes requires Java 5.0 >= Release 6. For OS 10.4 (Tiger), you can get the free universal binary from Apple. OS 10.5 (Leopard) comes with a new enough Java version pre-installed.

On Windows, beaTunes requires Java 6.0 >= Update 2 (a.k.a. 1.6.0_02). You can get the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) for free from Sun.

How can I check, which Java™ version is currently installed on my system?

If you are using a Mac, open Applications/Utilities in the Finder and start the application Terminal.app. Then type

java -version

and hit enter.
The output should read:

java version "1.5.0_13"
Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.5.0_13-b05-241)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.5.0_13-121, mixed mode, sharing)

A greater version should be fine, too.

On Windows, click on Start, then on Run, enter cmd, click OK. In the new window, enter

java -version

and hit enter.
The output should read:

java version "1.6.0_02"
Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.6.0_02-b06)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.6.0_02-b06, mixed mode, sharing)

A greater version should be fine, too.

Can I run beaTunes with an older iTunes version that works with HYMN?

beaTunes works fairly well with iTunes version before 6.0.2. That said, it's unsupported. Be warned that when you upgrade from a pre iTunes 6.0.2 version to a newer version, you will loose all color data and BPM fractions.
HYMN is a tool that allows you to circumvent the DRM system FairPlay which is used by Apple to protect music bought from its iTunes Music Store (iTMS). The exception are iTunes Plus songs.

Installation on Windows fails with a message about QTJava or QuickTime. What now?

Sometimes, when QuickTime (or iTunes) is installed before Java, the QuickTime installer does not install a Java library called QTJava.zip. Due to license restrictions we cannot ship this library with beaTunes. Therefore our installer checks during installation, whether QTJava.zip is properly installed. If it isn't, it will show an error message and abort installation.

To fix this issue, quit iTunes, QuickTime and beaTunes. Uninstall QuickTime, download a fresh version from Apple, and install the new version. Then install beaTunes. If the installation still fails, contact beaTunes support.

Using beaTunes

1. How can I make beaTunes analyze protected tracks?
2. Every time I switch from another application to beaTunes, I see the blue spinning ball and beaTunes is slow. What's happening?
3. What is the 'color' good for?
4. Why should I analyze the language of my songs' lyrics?
5. How can I tag songs and why should I?
6. How can I use beaTunes for blogging about music?
7. How can I cancel the analysis of one or more songs?
8. How can I cancel the analysis of all songs?
9. The BPM estimated by beaTunes is twice/half as fast as the actual BPM. Why is that and how can I fix this?
10. What's the fastest way to analyze just BPM?
11. How can I update to a new version of beaTunes?
12. Do I have to analyze all songs in my music library in one session?
13. Why aren't the BPMs showing up in Rane Serato Scratch Live?
14. How can I lookup titles and artists for tracks that have no information associated with them?
15. How can I configure beaTunes to read the iTunes library on my external harddrive?
16. I have multiple iTunes libraries. How can I work with beaTunes?

How can I make beaTunes analyze protected tracks?

There is no easy way to achieve this. DRM protected tracks cannot be analyzed. The reason is obvious: If beaTunes could easily access the raw audio data for analysis, it could just as easily create an unprotected copy. With the exception of iTunes Plus songs, all songs purchased from the iTunes Store are DRM protected.

As a DRM-free alternative to the iTunes Store you might want to check out Amazon's MP3 store.

Every time I switch from another application to beaTunes, I see the blue spinning ball and beaTunes is slow. What's happening?

Whenever you switch from another application to beaTunes, beaTunes synchronizes with iTunes to catch up on external changes to the iTunes Music Library. With large libraries, this can be a little annoying. Since in many cases there are either no or only insignificant changes, you can turn this feature off. Just go to Preferences > General and uncheck Synchronize with iTunes on window activation.
You can still synchronize with iTunes manually by selecting File > Synchronize or Shift-Command-Y on Mac and Shift-Control-Y on Windows.

What is the 'color' good for?

The song 'color' determined by beaTunes is a measure of how a song sounds in relationship to the other songs in your library. I.e. blue songs sound more similar to each other than to red songs.

Why should I analyze the language of my songs' lyrics?

Well, of course you don't have to. But if your collection is a mixture of say Spanish and English songs, maybe you'd like to be able to sort them by language. It would make it a whole lot easier to create mix-tapes in just one language.

The built-in language analysis works on two levels: First it looks at the lyrics you may have stored in iTunes. If you haven't done that, you might want to look them up using the Google Lyrics button on the Lyrics pane of the Get Info dialog. Second, if you feel that that is too much work, you can select the fallback option. That means, that beaTunes will analyze the titles (not the lyrics) of all tracks in an album and guess the language of a song.

Additionally, there is also an inspection that tells you when an artist has songs in different languages or some with a language and others with none.

How can I tag songs and why should I?

beaTunes allows you to assign tags to individual songs, much like del.icio.us. This does not only help to improve the match process, but can also be very convenient, when searching for a particular song or group of songs.

In order to assign a tag, just select a song and click on its tag column (slow click). A dialog will pop up, showing an input field for your tags and a tag cloud of already used tags. Using the tag cloud for entering the new tags helps keeping your library consistent.
You can also tag songs through the Get Info dialog.

How can I use beaTunes for blogging about music?

Whenever you select a playlist or one or more songs in beaTunes you can open the blog editor either through the context menu or through Tools > Blog About. The editor allows you to write a blog entry about the selected songs and post that entry and a list of the selected songs to your blog site.

Currently Atom 0.3 and 1.0 are supported, which means that you can easily post to your blogger.com blog. Just make sure that you configure your blog in the Preferences. There you can also choose whether you would like the song list linked to their corresponding Amazon pages.

How can I cancel the analysis of one or more songs?

Go to the Analysis Queue and select the songs that you want to cancel the analysis of. Control-Click (Mac) or Right-Click (Windows) and choose Cancel Task.
Tip: If you just want to cancel the analysis of songs with a particular genre, first sort by genre by clicking on the genre table header, then select the songs you want to cancel.

How can I cancel the analysis of all songs?

Go to the Tools menu and and select Clear Analysis Queue.

The BPM estimated by beaTunes is twice/half as fast as the actual BPM. Why is that and how can I fix this?

To most BPM analyzers (incl. beaTunes) a song that has a BPM of 120 looks very much like a song that has a BPM of 60 or even 30. Therefore you need to specify the approximate range of BPM you expect, when you start the analysis. However, sometimes this is hard - especially when you analyze hundreds of songs. Therefore beaTunes offers several ways to correct the measured BPM.

Select the song that has the wrong BPM. Click on the BPM column of that song. The BPM field becomes editable. Enter the correct value.

You can also select the song, Control-Click (Mac) or Right-Click (Windows) and select 'Tap Beat' from the context menu. This allows you to tap the beat and have beaTunes store the result.

If you know that some songs are actually twice or half as fast, select the songs you want to change, then select 'Double BPM' or 'Halve BPM' form the 'Edit' menu.

Alternatively you can also select the song in the library view and click 'Analyze Song'. In the analysis options dialog choose an appropriate BPM range.

What's the fastest way to analyze just BPM?

Since version 1.0.1 beaTunes contains some optimizations for analyzing just color or just BPM. To take advantage of this, select only BPM in the Analysis Options dialog (no color, no silence, ...) and set the precision slider to Fast. These settings will significantly speed up the analysis.

If you have a multicore or multiprocessor machine you should also try to increase the number of tasks processed in parallel. This can be done in the Analysis pane of the Preferences dialog and requires a restart of beaTunes to take effect.

On an Intel Core 2 Duo running OS X, switching from one task to two tasks in parallel almost doubles the analysis speed. On Windows the speedup is not as great.

How can I update to a new version of beaTunes?

On Mac, just replace your old beaTunes app. If OS X asks you whether you want to replace the old application, say yes.

On Windows, uninstall the old version. Make sure that you do not have the installer delete Color and BPM data. Then download the new Windows installer and open it.

Do I have to analyze all songs in my music library in one session?

No. You can shutdown beaTunes at any time and resume analysis simply by starting beaTunes again.

Why aren't the BPMs showing up in Rane Serato Scratch Live?

If the BPM are showing up in iTunes, rescan the id3 tags in the setup part of Serato. Then, again in Serato, click the little arrow that points left directly under the search bar in the main screen. It will drop a menu that will enable you to select BPM's as one of your options.

You can get more answers to Serato questions at the Serato Scratch Live Forum.

How can I lookup titles and artists for tracks that have no information associated with them?

If you ripped a lot of songs while you were offline or simply before CDDB was used, your tracks may have meaningless titles like 01-Track.mp3. beaTunes lets you fix this.

Analyze these songs with the Import metadata from MusicIP.com option (Internet connection required). Choose carefully how the new data should be imported, to make sure that you don't accidently loose any of your existing data.

If you don't trust the automatic process you can choose Don't import song info, just look up PUID. After completion of the analysis, open the Get Info dialog on one of the tracks. beaTunes will now try to obtain information about the song and underline any existing data that it thinks is wrong. Depending on your OS, Right- or Control-click on the underlined item and beaTunes will suggest one or more alternatives.

To find out even more about a particular song using MusicBrainz, Amazon or discogs, you may also want to use the Open in... feature. Right- or Control-Click on a song and choose Open in.... Then select one of the options and a corresponding page will open in your browser.

Please note that MusicBrainz is a non-profit effort. It depends on individuals like yourself to provide high quality data. Consider contributing by volunteering as an editor.

How can I configure beaTunes to read the iTunes library on my external harddrive?

Just open the beaTunes Preferences dialog and go to the General tab. There you find a browse button [...], which allows you to choose your iTunes Library file.

Note, that on OS X, the external drives are not listed on the same level as your internal harddrive. To see external drives, select your internal drive, then select the Volumes folder.

I have multiple iTunes libraries. How can I work with beaTunes?

beaTunes does not know, which library iTunes currently uses. You need to make sure, that it reads the correct iTunes (Music) Library.xml file. To do so, open the beaTunes Preferences dialog and go to the General tab. There you find a browse button [...], which allows you to choose your iTunes Library file.

Technical

1. How can I add my own analysis code? Is there a plugin API?
2. Is beaTunes a universal binary? Will it run natively on Intel and PPC Macs?
3. Why isn't beaTunes using QuickTime to access protected audio files?
4. Analysis takes a long time. Is this because beaTunes is written in Java?

How can I add my own analysis code? Is there a plugin API?

beaTunes is written in a way that makes it possible to easily add custom analysis tasks, inspections and background themes. However, we simply didn't have the time yet to write up some documentation. Please contact us via email with any questions you might have.

Is beaTunes a universal binary? Will it run natively on Intel and PPC Macs?

Yes. Most of beaTunes is written in Java, which will run with the native JVM installed on your system. Some parts are native code built as universal binary.

Until version 1.1.3 beaTunes shipped with a PPC Java Stub and therefore Finder claimed that it was a PPC application. However, this did not mean that it runs under Rosetta on Intel, since the stub was smart enough to realize that it should switch to the native Java VM right away. Please see Technical Q&A QA1295 and this thread from the Apple java-dev mailing list for details.

Since version 1.1.4 beaTunes ships with a universal Java Stub.

Why isn't beaTunes using QuickTime to access protected audio files?

beaTunes is using QuickTime/CoreAudio. Unfortunately QuickTime only allows the playback of protected files, but not transcoding. This means that QuickTime does not allow the extraction of the raw audio data, which is needed for analysis. In fact, not even the playback of protected movie files necessarily works.
If QuickTime allowed the extraction of the raw audio data, getting around the protection would be trivial.

Analysis takes a long time. Is this because beaTunes is written in Java?

If beaTunes was written in assembler, analysis would probably be faster. Chances are, that beaTunes would also crash much more often. Contrary to common perception the speed of Java has caught up quite a bit compared to early versions from almost ten years ago. Pretty much every recent benchmark that compares Java with C or C++ has concluded that Java is typically 2-3 times slower than C and in many cases as fast as C++ or faster. This means that nowadays mainly the code quality determines whether a C implementation is faster than a Java implementation.
So the answer is no. In fact the first step of the analysis is the decoding of the compressed audio file (mp3, aac, etc) into raw audio data. During this step beaTunes uses the native QuickTime or CoreAudio libraries. Additionally there are some other analysis steps that are done natively to take advantage of special hardware capabilities.