Comments on: Remove Duplicate Songs from iTunes

By: JaimesBeam

JaimesBeam — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 07:41:13 +0000

I don’t think any of the iTunes cleanup apps, or iTunes, does a good job of cleaning up duplicates.

I think it’s doable, but I think most of them take the wrong approach. The most simple attribute of a duplicate that will allways be there is the track length. That will give you the first cut at finding duplicates. The next thing it to loook at similarities in track, album, artist label fields. Third way is to look at what it matches in GraceNote. Fourth is to look at the apps that will identify a song by listening to it.

I find simply looking at the track length works as well as many of the complex apps. I wish there was an app that included this criteria in it’s algorithm.

Then there is the question of what is a dupe. Is two tracks that differ only in the sample bps a dupe? I would say yes, and keep the one closest to a target bps. Are two tracks that essentially differ only in one being a few seconds longer a dupe? Yes. Are two tracks that are from different albums but are essentially the same a dupe? Maybe… I would say yes, and would like to only store one copy with pointers to/from both albums so there is a record that the song is one both albums. I like to keep complete discographies, but hate keeping dupes.

Then there are the songs libs you get from friends that either have most of the track, album, artist info missing, or have all the info crammed into the track title, or God Forbid, into the file name!!! Most or these are from Windoze systems… need we say more?

Jim.

By: freddy

freddy — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 19:24:34 +0000

I followed the instructions mentioned above, i had previously tried deleting one by one, which turned out to be a nightmare. ( “so these duplicates also take up space on the hard drive?”) If they do, im glad to get rid of the because i had up to five duplicates in some cases. Works great I dont care if I had to sacrifice some songs compared to my library.

By: Toy Needle

Toy Needle — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 21:55:10 +0000

Well I tried Dupin, mentioned above, and it worked fabulously.

By: Kurt

Kurt — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 15:15:16 +0000

I have moved a hard drive from a network connection to my MacBook and everything that was on the original network connection is “dead”. Am i going to have to go song by song to delete these? I have thousands.

By: havvacuppa

havvacuppa — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 15:17:01 +0000

Ive got 200 songs duplicated…ive really got to sit there deleting EVERY SINGLE ONE???

What’s even more annoying is that itunes USED TO have this function, but for whatever reason, Apple decided to remove it.

By: JohnC

JohnC — Sun, 30 May 2010 16:41:06 +0000

This works in windows as well.
Ctrl+Shift then File..

By: garfield

garfield — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 03:29:39 +0000

how to remove duplicate songs from iphone it self.

By: forumsevdam

forumsevdam — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 10:29:07 +0000

AFAIK, this command also cares nothing about what’s been added to what playlists, or whether artwork, comments or lyrics have been attached. No attempt is made to reconcile all this when you delete a “duplicate” in this manner.

By: Shawn Koppenhoefer (DrKDev on Twitter)

Shawn Koppenhoefer (DrKDev on Twitter) — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 11:22:33 +0000

The above tip is helpful, but you still have to examine every track to determine whether you want to keep or delete the tracks it finds and Smart Playlists aren’t perfect either.

I suggest you go read Doug’s Applescript solution to this.
http://dougscripts.com/itunes/itinfo/dupin.php

Write your successes (or failures) back here!
/shawn

By: Nonny Moose

Nonny Moose — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:22:35 +0000

Great, so we know how to find the duplicates and delete them individually. How do we delete multiples? 100s of them, maybe 1000s of them at one time?

By: Kevin Killion

Kevin Killion — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 05:59:15 +0000

By: Vihelm

Vihelm — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 18:09:06 +0000

@johnnycourage,

looks like the list shows both original and duplicate, so don’t delete everything or you may delete songs you want

By: Sororo

Sororo — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 14:38:06 +0000

@Jared Flannagan
The real point is not what itunes can do, but how it tells you it can do it. I appreciate extra options being hidden to prevent long lists and clutter. I don’t think this hidden option is the reason other software is created either.

By: Bruce

Bruce — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 14:30:14 +0000

Several things: 1) It shows all songs that are the same name and artist so don’t select all and remove.

They use exact loosely. This just does a string compare on titile, artist. That’s IT! They may different times, off different albums, etc. So exact is not really exact. You really have to play or know each entry to decide if you want to remove one or the other.

By: johnnycourage

johnnycourage — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 13:34:33 +0000

can i select all and delete or does the list show the original and the duplicates?