i-Tunes duplicates

Can someone please help, i-Tunes on the family laptop (mine) has the entire library of music from son and daughters taste in modern, my wifes that is mainly based in the eighties and mine from the seventies!
I-Tunes has decided that 1 copy of a track is not enough and most tracks have at least 2 copies if not more, is there a simple way of deleting all duplicates? It is easy enough to display duplicates but it seems a time consuming to delete each one by one!

I have the same problem and the geeks in apple couldn’t solve my problem so I’ll be glad if someone on here can help.

I gave up looking for an answer – it’s like banging you head againsta brick wall.
So I deleted my library index files, rescanned it, then made a copy the “new scan” & will use it to replace my library file if/when it corrupts again

I think you’ll find it’s due to different formats, the same song may have been orginally ripped / bought in different formats.

I hate iTunes.

That’s all.

Nope it Itunes, it’s just ****!

Love my iphone & ipad, hate itunes*

* Yes I can get it to work, but it ain’t good or intuitive & corrupts far too easily

Wot they all sed.

pos that software.

If you’re on windows, there’s a vb script here that I found when I had the same issue.

I’m on macs though, so can’t vouch for it.

So what software allows you to import music from various sources, and by different people, including duplicate tracks, but then condenses any of those duplicate tracks into one while keeping the original associations with any alum it was imported with?

With any luck the two versions will have different dates for when they were added, sort them on that date, highlight the duplicates and delete.

To display the dates use the list display, right click the header bar and check the date added. The display will update itself. Click on the header to sort them in date order.

Hope that helps.

Thanks for your replies, glad I’m not the only one that finds iTunes sh1te!

Never had any issues, but then, I’ve never had to worry about accommodating three other people’s music and playlists. There is a facility called ‘find duplicates’, have you tried using it?

Yes & it does bugger all, been stablish (tbf) of late but still decides to loose films on a regular basis

I had the same issue and spent time looking for solutions.

In the end I decided the least risk “solution” was to sign up for itunes Match as I wanted some of my older MP3s uprated and wanted a streaming service where I owned the content after paying for it.

Backed up my music. Signed up for itunes Match, let it “match” everything then deleted my entire library. (NOTE IF YOU DO THIS FFS REMEMBER THE BACKUP FIRST).
Then I spent a good day or so downloading my entire library and basked in my smugness at no longer having duplicates…..

My smugness was however shortlived; many of the songs cut out after 30 secs….FFS! aaaargh! iTunes really is utter shit 🙂

Anyhow, after researching the issue I then deleted my entire library again. I disabled concurrrent downloads and forced it to download one track at a time.
I’m happy to report my library plays as it should now. £20-odd, many hours and barely a hair left……

The above sorted my library on my PC but on my iPads/iPhones I’ve gone back to syncing using iTunes as the downloads to the iPads also suffered the 30sec problem (unless you stream the album first).

Hope that helps OP – if you’re willing to punt another £20 at the problem – just remember to turn off auto renew….

Just read that google music launched in the uk. I think that offers a similar service to iTunes match for free. You may be able to use that as part of a solution by reimporting your music into iTunes after google music has processed it and removed the dups. (I’m assuming you “need” iTunes).

App called TuneUp that addresses this issue , and more. Not cheap though. You can try a a trial version first to have a go. It acts as a plug in for iTunes, so starts up automatically when iTunes opens.

Is there anything that’s clever enough to differentiate between duplicates on different albums?

Pretty sure it’s file/display duplicates then you get a giant list of dupes. On a mac that is, now I’m doubting the ‘file’ part of that but it’s a menu item on the left then display duplicates

I had the same problem it took a while to work out what it was. In my experience its when you import the album folder this may have the playlist in it also, delete the playlist file and only have the tracks that are part of the album in the album folder prior to importing – no more duplicates

Try Media Monkey, links to Iphone and iPad etc. and treats it like a hard drive. you can sort, add, delete what you like. Itunes is crap!

Try Media Monkey, links to Iphone and iPad etc. and treats it like a hard drive.

I am not seeing how treating it like a hard drive is of any benefit, unless you only have 20 songs.

you can sort, add, delete what you like

As you can with itunes, the problem is the op has never done that.

Really whatever you use, you have to do some kind of sorting. I have about 6000 tracks in itunes, there is no magic wand that any program can wave to sort them out. I realised a few weeks after starting using itunes that some sorting was required so I have kept ontop of it as its grown.

Problem I have is that I don;t use Itunes that often, and get music from avariety of sources.

I’d love to be able to just say – look at these folders and pick up everything that isn’t already in your library. It just doesn’t seem to allow that 🙁

I have about 6000 tracks in itunes, there is no magic wand that any program can wave to sort them out.

Well, Beets[/url]. You do need to be fairly tech savvy to use it though.

Most of my 200GB was mostly sorted out until one day I fatefully ticked the “let iTunes **** up my music collection” box.

That has been one of the worst decisions of my life. The worst was thinking “that’s a great idea” and clicking it on my laptop too.

yep, this is what i meant, gives you somewhere to start?