Duplicate songs on import

I have seen other posts on this whereby the advice was to highlight the duplicate song and then clear. When you are bringing in a thousand songs or more and they are duplicating this is a huge deal. I had Creative Sound Labs equipment before. It was a lot more versatile. They had an automatic search and update fuction which would search selected files for new songs and automatically bring them into the library. You could also search and delete duplicates with the touch of one button. Assuming that I-tunes doesn't have this type of functionality, is there any chance we can actually send I-tunes an e-mail suggesting they give Creative Sound Labs a call for some tips? ha ha
Seriously...I am finding this very frustrating.

A new library doesn't automatically see music that you'd like in it, even if you set the iTunes Music folder location to an existing music folder. (That just tells the library where to put new music that you rip or download.) You have to Add your music to the library, just like you did with the first library.
Yes, you could keep a special library for the iPhone using the same music folder as the first library, but PT is right. It's much simpler to maintain a special playlist within your current library for syncing to the iPhone.
iMac G4 17; iBook G4 1.33 Mhz 14; iPod 3G 20GB Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Similar Messages

ITunes adds duplicate songs when importing but not making copies in the iTunes Media folder?

This is an irregular problem and does not happen at every new import, but every now & again iTunes is creating duplicate files entries for the same song when I import my music folder.
Now I know many people post a similar problem, but before we start can I state that both the 'Keep iTunes Media folder organized AND "Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library are turned off, and always have been.
Right clicking on duplicates of a particular song proves that iTunes is not copying the file into it's own media folder and adding that to the library.
All listed entries for a particular song iTunes direct you to the same file in the same location in the finder.
I am currently just having to delete the duplicates everytime it makes them, although this is VERY time consuming!
Any ideas on what is causing it or what will fix the problem would be great!

Nevermind...I figured out my issue. The problem is that I'm an idiot.
When dragging my folders in, they not only had MP3 files, but a M3U file as well. iTunes was importing the M3U playlist, then the MP3s...that's how I was getting my dups.
=\

Duplicate songs when imported music files into itunes

i imported a significant song selection (10,000 songs) on to i tunes, but there were heaps of duplicates. Any idea why this may be? And how i can stop it happening? Takes ages to delete duplicates.

*Takes ages to delete duplicates*
Have a look at Doug's AppleScripts there are a couple of scripts there to help manage duplicates. Search the page for "Corral iTunes Dupes" and "Corral All dupes" : Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes

Manually manage music + import .m3u playlist to iphone 5 = duplicate songs

hello,
I tried searching the forums for a related questions but didn't find any. if it exists let me know.
i have a iphone 5 (ios 6) and a ipod 2g (ios 4.2). I use itunes on windows and manage both devices manually for music and videos. Now I have a playlist in WMP which I exported as a .m3u file.
In itunes, I can import the playlist and it shows up under the 'playlists' correctly. Now I wanted to transfer this playlist to my ipod and iphone (note: my ipod and iphone already have all the songs in the playlist plus many others. I never use them in 'sync' mode).
I was under the impression that a playlist is just a list of pointers to songs and not songs themselves. So when I drag the playlist into the ipod within itunes, it creates a new playlist with that name on the ipod and correctly transfers the pointers onto the ipod. the playlist works perfectly on the ipod and there and no duplicate songs.
now with the new iphone 5 and new ios 6, something seems to be different. when i drag the playlist into the iphone, it does create a new playlist but it copies all the songs again, even though the exact songs (all metadata identical since they're from the same physical source on my harddisk - album, artists, art, title, etc). so it creates duplicates of these songs.
now the still tougher part. I tunes apparently has a find duplicates feature. But it onyl seem to work for music imported into itunes library. It is greyed out if you click on the iphone and then try to find duplicates (if iphone is set to manually manage music.)
so is this expected behaviour? I think this is a bug in the new ios since the drag drop playlist manually works perfectly in ios 4.2.
any thoughts?

Unfortunately, you'll need to 'start fresh,' as it were. However, you could transfer your library from the old computer and sync. This MAY keep you from having to erase everything. Worst case scenario, if you transfer your library, though, would be to wipe it and then load the same content right back on.
iTunes: How to move your music to a new computer

If I import will I have duplicate songs?

I have two computers; 15" Powerbook G4 and 20" iMac G5. Before giving my iMac G5 away I backed up my iTunes music to an external harddrive. I want to import it to my Powerbook, but am hesitant because more than 75% of the music I already have on my PowerBook and am afraid of having thounsands of duplicate songs.
If I import will I have duplicate songs?

Well... I tried again with the same results. Here's what I did this time:
- Made 2 copies of the song that is already in iTunes. One had a slightly different file name as I'd duplicated the file - it had a 2 at the end of the file name. I put those two in an untitled folder and dragged that into iTunes. No duplicates, as confirmed by looking in iTunes, looking in the finder where that artist's files are stored and searching for part of the file name in Spotlight (the part that would be in common with all of the file names.) No duplicates. Nada.
- Tried again with out the folder and still no duplicates. What do you think? Would it really be possible to drag in a whole slew of songs and only get the unique subset added to the iTunes library, without any duplicates? That would be great, eh?
Any other thoughts?

Duplicate song titles for imported CD library

Had my computer crash, but had music files backedup. Had itunes installed at the time, but not the latest version. Up and running now with XP Pro/service pack 2. I can see all my music files. Installed the new version of itunes as a new user since the harddrive was reformateed assumed this was right. Everything seemed to load fine - supposedly music files were converted, etc. When checking Music Library, I saw all my music (over 300 CD's) successfully imported and something strange was all my former playlist were listed in the playlist column. Now here is the problem - in Itunes music library, for each song there is two or three duplicates under the same CD title. When trying to make a new playlist by dragging a song over to a new playlist title, only one of the songs can be movee. The other duplicates cannot be moved and as soon as I click on one, an exclamation marked is recorded by the song. Since I've got the 40GB IPOD, I had created playlist for each artist and so just about all my music was in a playlist and is my IPOD. For the few CD's I had previoulsy added(before the crash) that were not in a playlist, these songs are not duplicated and can be moved to a new playlist with no problem. Tried the unistall and reinstall, this did not work. Tried deleting some of the old playlist, unistalling and reinstalling to see if the duplicate song title problem was solved and this did not work. Besides manually massaging my entire CD library to delete the empty song titles, is there something I can do? (By the way, the crash was a software probelm and not a hardware issue)

when I burn a cd the track listing does not show the song titles when it is in someone else's computer, but it does when it is in mine. Any suggestions?
After you burn the CD in your computer, select the CD in iTunes.
Make sure the song info is correct then menu Advanced -> Submit CD track names.
This will send the info to Gracenote, which is where iTunes (and other apps) get the track names.
Dunno about the icon.

ITunes duplicates random songs when importing

I recently just reorganized my music library to get rid of some of the duplicate songs, but when I deleted, then reimported my songs, itunes randomly duplicated probably about 1k songs, and I don't know why. Is there a way to prevent Itunes from doing that or do I just have to go through and manually take them out?

If you are in a country where re-downloading is possible (iTunes in the Cloud and iTunes Match Availability by Country - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5085), delete the track (and the original file) and download again (Downloading [using iOS or computer] past purchases from the App Store, iBookstore, and iTunes Store - http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2519). See tips on downloading in https://discussions.apple.com/message/19097773, especially unchecking the "Allow Simultaneous Downloads" box in the downloads tab of iTunes.
Select the store on the left side of iTunes.
Click on Purchased on the right side under Quick Links.
You can re-download your available previous purchases.
If you cannot download a second time, contact iTunes Store support staff through the report a problem links in your account history or,
iTunes Customer Service Contact - http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/contact.html > Get iTunes support via Express Lane > iTunes > iTunes Store
Incomplete playback seems to be reported several times a day here. I don't recall this happening before iTunes 10. I would suggest posting feedback to Apple so they aware of an issue.
iTunes application feedback - http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunesapp.html

How do I delete duplicate songs from my iphone 4s

I have tried re-syncing with my iTunes on my PC and it doesn't work. Just says "syncing" and quickly goes through the steps, and everything on the iphone is still the same. I can delete albums from my collection on my PC and they delete from the iphone, but the duplicate songs are not showing up on the PC and they are in the phone and I can't see any way to get rid of them without deleting the whole album from my collection.

I just had this happen when I wanted "normalized" music on my iPhone because I am no satisfied with sound check. All my songs still had different volumes. I turned off the cloud on my phone and added music with USB. I turned the cloud back on and I got the duplicate issue. Here is what I did to fix it:
Turn off Match on phone
Update match in iTunes from the "store" menu (see below for why this might be REALLY important.
Connect phone
Check "manually manage" in iTunes from the first tab when you click your phone in the left pane
Open the "tree" for you iPhone in iTunes by clicking the triangle.
Select "music" in that tree.
Delete all the Music from the phone.
Sync it.
Eject phone.
Turn match back on and download music via the iPhone but this takes a while.
or I just reconnected it, then went to the music tab for the phone ticked the sync option and checked the playlists I wanted. I synced it. I then made sure "manually manage" was checked in first tab, then went into the left pane and deleted the playlists. This leaves the music on the iPhone but not the playlists. I ejected and turned on match on the phone.
My guess is there is a glitch where identical playlists from the cloud seemed to conflict with the ones physically on the phone and / or iTunes match could not match the physical files on the phone. It seems my metadata for the files "seemed" different than the ones in the cloud. Running RealPlay gain on my library is suspect for my issue so if something happened on your computer that changed the data about your files even without you knowing, this might be the issue. It is merely a hypothesis but it seems logical. Resyncing match then putting the newly understood match on the phone seems to resolve my issue.

How do I delete duplicate songs, but keep a link in their original albums to the single copy of the song left, so it will play in each album in sequence as if it were still there?

Greetings!
After importing my 300 or so CDs into iTunes, I found I have tons of duplicate songs.
Example: I have a song that came in a original album, then in again in a "Greatest Hits" album, then again in a "Hits of the 80's" album, and again in a soundtrack album. I have now have 4 copies of the exact same song.
How do I delete duplicate songs, but keep a link in their original albums back to the single copy of the song left, so it will play in each album in sequence as if it were still there?
I don't think this currently exists, but as my library keeps growing the duplicates keep growing. It would be nice if Apple sees this and adds a way to link songs to multiple albums.
I don't want to create a custom playlist for every album that has a duplicate song or two (I'd have dozens of playlists) - thought about fixing it that way but not really practical.

To my knowledge, there is no way of doing what you want. The only workaround is to create playlists for the other albums containing the track, but that isn't practical for most people.
You could provide Apple with feedback here: http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunesapp.html

How do I find duplicate songs/files in iTunes 11?

How do I find duplicate songs/files in iTunes 11?
Earlier versions of iTunes had a simple menu option to click on.
All duplicates would then be listed. Cannot find this option now.
Regards ..... blayk.

If you want to free up your memory, maybe first checking to see if you got duplicates. -
From the File menu in iTunes, choose Show Duplicates. iTunes will then list all of the duplicate titles in your library.
If you delete a music in the iTunes folder, then when you try to play that particular music in your iTunes, it won't work as iTunes wouldn't be able to find it. However, when you import music on to your computer, always import straight into your iTunes, no where else.

HT204406 How to delete duplicate songs from Libary without deleting them from play list or other devices

How to delete duplicate songs from libary without deleting them from playlist or other devices

I'm with you verm71; it's not entirely clear how Apple is expecting you to manage this. I'm going on vacation soon and want to clean up my phone so that it's nice and empty for the new pictures. There doesn't seem to be a way to do this without losing your pictures in the new Photos as well. If imported, it's impossible to see which is the Cloud version and which is the Local version. It's very annoying.
I've also noticed in iPhoto you used to have the ability to locate the original of the picture inside the photo database. That option is not provided in Photos, making finding the original extremely difficult.
It seems to be a great, well-oiled system. But I would love to know how Apple envisions the typical workflow for archiving...

Duplicate songs and sync fail

I tried syncing my iPod Classic and accidentally created duplicates of ALL my songs. I have hundreds of songs in my iTunes library. None of the new music I purchased successfully syncing and now my iPod Classic only has a small number of songs to listen to. How can I organize my iTunes library so it only displays a song once and most importantly, how can I sync my new purchased music successfully?

Hello Shanette,
You may want to set up your iPod classic to manually manage the music. That way, you can just drag the new songs to the iPod and also search for and delete duplicates.
This box would need to be checked if you are manually managing content over to your iPod:
You can find the full article here:
Managing content manually on iPhone, iPad, and iPod
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1535
Once you have that enabled and your iPod selected, you can use iTunes' feature of showing duplicate items so that you can see them all at once and delete the duplicates that you want to remove:
Choose File > Display Duplicates to show duplicate items (matches are based on the song name and artist). If you have multiple versions of the same song (for example, live and studio versions, or versions from different albums) you can hold the Alt or Option key (for Mac OS X) or the Shift key (for Windows) and choose File > Display Exact Duplicates. This will show only duplicate songs having the same name, artist, and album.
If you are using iTunes 11 (the latest version of iTunes at this time), you will need to go to View>Show Duplicate Items (you can hold Alt or Option here as well to get the Show Exact Duplicate Items option). You can find the full article here:
How to find and remove duplicate items in your iTunes library
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2905
This should help you identify the duplicates all at one time so that you can delete the extra versions of songs. I hope this helps get you back on track!
Thank you for using Apple Support Communities.
Best,
Sheila M.

Automatically deduping duplicate songs - is it possible?

I copied my libary from a laptop to my PC, using an external hard drive to transfer the files. Somehow almost all, but not every song, was duplicated once or even twice on the hard drive, but i did not know this until i'd impoted the contents onto my PC.
When I go into "show duplicate songs" i get the list of dupes, but have to delete the dupes manually (time consuming). Is there a way of automatically deleteing anything that itunes suspects may be a dupe?
I can't simply start again because I no longer have the laptop, the only place with my libary is my hard drive (dupes and all).

I know my friend has had duplicate songs on his computer and found a program that will scan your hard drive for duplicate songs and allow you to verify and delete. (http://noclone.net/Duplicate_Mp3.asp) The problem in the library is probably solved the way you already are doing it. Allow iTunes to find the copies and select them all and delete them. If you do scan your drive and delete dupes, then you can delete your entire library and re-import all the non-duplicate songs.

Why duplicate files when importing

Why am I getting duplicate files when importing into iTunes? I am dragging and dropping them into iTunes. When I ask to find file in finder, I am sent to the iTunes music folder and there are 2 files for each song added. I don't have that kind of space!
I spent several hours trying to clean this up and deleted duplicates out of iTunes library, then out of the music folder. I tried to test which file of the song I was deleating (orig file, not file1) and now .... iTunes can't find about 3,500 tracks that will need to be reassociated. What is the easiest way to do that?
I'm not sure if this is another subject or not, but when I go to delete a track it does not show up in trash first. I only get one window asking me if I want to delete this - click yes and it's forever gone. Do not pass trash. YIKES. Is there a way to get it into trash -> then empty trash like everything else?
Thx.
iTunes 11.0.1 on Mac OSX 10.6.8

Maybe I may have figured out part of my question ... these albums have a .mu3 file. Would that be causing the duplicates?

Getting rid of duplicate songs: a lot of them!

I've imported my iTunes songs from my old PC to my new iMac but everything has been duplicated so now there is two of every song!!
It's a nightmare deleting each one separately, so any suggestions for a quick solution? Should I delete the lot and then import them again by connecting my iPod?
Any ideas gratefully received!
Tracey
iMac Mac OS X (10.4.4)

If your entire library is on your iPod, it's probably the easiest way to restore the library.
Download Senuti or iPodRip or similar application. You can find the latest versions on versiontracker.com
Proceed with caution. I don't want to feel responsible for possible loss of your library.
If you have set up your iPod to automatically update, set it to manual update first.
Or (this is from the Keyboard Shortcuts)
iPod shortcuts
Prevent iPod from automatically updating when you connect it to your computer
Command-Option as you connect the iPod to your computer (hold the keys down until the iPod appears in the iTunes Source list)
Then run one of the applications you downloaded and transfer the contents to your computer.
There are other methods to get rid of the duplicates, but the approach to delete them depends on what kind of duplicates you have.
Do you have duplicate song files or duplicate entries in the library.
Hope this helps.
M
17' iMac fp 800 MHz 768 MB RAM Mac OS X (10.3.9) Several ext. HD (backup and data)

Duplicate songs on import

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