HT2905 Delete duplicate songs with exact same date

If all instances of given song have exact same date, will the procedure recommended in Support page "How to find and remove duplicate items in your iTunes library" (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2905) delete all instances, or all but one instance?
If it would delete all instances, what should I do to delete all but one instance?

The View > Show Exact Duplicates feature lists all duplicate copies. You need to manually select all but one of each group to remove. Or use my DeDuper script if you don't want to do it by hand. Please take note of the warning to backup your library before deduping. See this thread for background.
tt2

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How do remove thousands of duplicate songs with the same date?

Brand new mac book pro. Made the move from windows. Migration asst moved music from pc to itunes. I also have iPhone/iPad2. Now I have 2-4 versions of every song and they all have the same date. How can I get down to just one version of each song?

Yes there is a way. Post back with the following information:
1. With respect to your home directory, what is the exact folder that the files are in (ie, are they in the Documents folder, or in a subfolder within the Documents folder). What are the exact names (caps included) of these directories?
2. What is the exact name scheme of the files? You mentioned they are incremented numerically, but what are the rest of the files' names (again, capitalization is important)?
With this information, there are several ways to approach the problem, which will basically be four steps to ensure you do not inadvertently remove files you wish to keep:
1. Create a new folder to temporarily house the files.
2. Issue a command to target the files by name and move them into a separate folder.
3. Check the old parent folder to ensure nothing is missing, and optionally check the names of the moved items.
4. Finally delete the contents of the temporary folder, along with the folder itself.
The specifics of these steps will depend on the names of the files and the folder that they are in, so provide as much information as you can about that, and we can work through the steps.

HT2905 Deleting duplicate songs

I want to clean up the duplicates in my iTunes, but have a lot of songs that have the iCloud icon next to them. Will it delete the songs from my iCloud if I delete that version of the song or should I delete the iCloud version and keep the other one?

Hi AmyF1234,
If you have a question about deleting items from iCloud, you may find the following article helpful:
iTunes Store: How to delete songs from iCloud
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4915
Regards,
- Brenden

How do I delete duplicate songs? (date and time stamp are identical

I put my cd collection in itunes and now have duplicates of most songs (don't know how I did that). The duplicates have the exact same date and time, so the method to delete a "newer" duplicate will not work. Is there a simple way to delete exact duplicates from the itune library?

This application can help. It's US$15. http://dougscripts.com/apps/dupinapp.php

How do I delete duplicate songs in my iTunes? I have hundreds and I don't want to delete them one by one. They were all added on the same date, so sorting by the date won't help.

How do I delete duplicate songs in my iTunes? I have hundreds and I don't want to delete them one by one. They were all added on the same date, so sorting by the date won't help.

Hi, if this is in regards to your library simply open up itunes and do the following steps:
Click File
Scroll down to "show duplicates"
A list will then appear of your duplicate song titles.
Be sure to CAREFULLY review each song to make sure it is a duplicate ( as I have some music that is the same song but live, acoustic etc...)
Proceed to manually delete each song from the list and leave alone any song that you wish to keep.
Best of luck,
Cait

I am trying to delete duplicate songs in my library, when I click on the duplicate and go to edit to delete it, it asks me if i want to delete the playlist!

I am trying to delete duplicate songs in my library, when I go to edit to delete it, it asks me if I want to delete the playlist!

Apple's official advice on duplicates is here... HT2905: How to find and remove duplicate items in your iTunes library. It is a manual process and the article fails to explain some of the potential pitfalls such as lost ratings and playlist membership.
Use Shift > View > Show Exact Duplicate Items to display duplicates as this is normally a more useful selection. You need to manually select all but one of each group to remove. Sorting the list by Date Added may make it easier to select the appropriate tracks, however this works best when performed immediately after the dupes have been created. If you have multiple entries in iTunes connected to the same file on the hard drive then don't send to the recycle bin.
Use my DeDuper script if you're not sure, don't want to do it by hand, or want to preserve ratings, play counts and playlist membership. See this thread for background, this post for detailed instructions, and please take note of the warning
to backup your library before deduping.
(If you don't see the menu bar press ALT to show it temporarily or CTRL+B to keep it displayed.)
The most recent version of the script can tidy dead links as long as there is at least one live duplicate to merge stats and playlist membership to and should cope sensibly when the same file has been added via multiple paths.
tt2

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

I need a script that can delete duplicate songs within iTunesMedia but not shown on iTunes GUI

I copied entire music in itunes library A and paste it in itunes library B. I subsequently experimented with import playlist and import .XML files of itunes library A to itunes library B. I notice songs in music folder have been duplicated i.e. the gigabyte of music folder greated than gigabyte shown on itunes GUI.
Wow, I never knew importing .XML file (through import playlist) will import the songs, the metadata, the artwork and the entire playlist which i never created in the first place (I dont know what else had been imported).
Anyway, the songs are not duplicated on the iTunes GUI. They are duplicated within iTunesMedia\Music... folders. Can someone provide me a Script to delete these approx. 100GB duplicates. The DeDuper Script I have can only delete duplicate songs displayed on iTunes GUI.
Thanks for your help as usual.

The script is only intended to work on things that iTunes would treat as "Exact Duplicates" and it only works on files that are connected to the iTunes library. Before starting all files in your media folders should be added to the iTunes library.
In the context of the earlier thread, type 1 or logical duplicates are multiple entries to the same file and type 2 or physical duplicates are multiple copies of the same file. Type 2 dupes will have identical tag information (at least they will unless you edit one of them) and the same file size so will thus display as "Exact Duplicates" if present.
The script avoids the more complex problem of trying to detect and selectively remove what I called type 3 duplicates, that is alternate recordings or rips of the same tune, principally because that is a much harder problem to automate, but also because "best track to keep" from a set of potential candiates will be a subjective matter.
The current version of the DeDuper script is 1.0.1.2 dated 2nd December 2011. I've just downloaded and run it on a test library. I had 35 tracks that I first duplicated by copying the Music folder into Automatically Add to iTunes. I then renamed Music as Music1, selected each file in turn so that iTunes would "know" the files were missing, renamed the folder back to Music and then dragged & dropped the folder into the library. This created a library of 140 tracks, 35 originals, 35 physical dupes and 70 logical dupes . The script ran as designed and reduced the library back down to 35 tracks with the 35 physical dupes being sent to the recycle bin.
tt2

How can I delete duplicate songs in Itunes ?

How can i delete duplicate songs in Itunes ?

I have the same problem, where my music library shows duplicates of just about everything I put in iTunes now. It began about a month ago. As far as looking at Date Added, well they are duplicates all put on at the same time. It isn't a matter of the title showing up later, or my having accidentally added the same song twice (say, from different sources or compilations). This is a problem with Apple I think because it just began a month ago and I changed no settings, nor did I do anything else. It just began to happen out of the blue. Anyone know about this?

How can delete duplicate songs in itunes

how can i delete duplicate songs in iTunes?

I have the same problem, where my music library shows duplicates of just about everything I put in iTunes now. It began about a month ago. As far as looking at Date Added, well they are duplicates all put on at the same time. It isn't a matter of the title showing up later, or my having accidentally added the same song twice (say, from different sources or compilations). This is a problem with Apple I think because it just began a month ago and I changed no settings, nor did I do anything else. It just began to happen out of the blue. Anyone know about this?

How to delete duplicate songs quickly

My Mac has multiple duplicate listings of songs. It is tiring to go through each one and delete it. How can I do this quickly?

Hello Brenda,
It can get very tedious to find duplicates manually, but iTunes has a feature of showing duplicate items so that you can see them all at once and delete the duplicate 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!
Best,
Sheila M.

How to Delete Duplicate Songs in iTunes 8

Is there an easy way to delete duplicate songs in iTunes 8?
A friend of mine with a large CD collection and I share music. The trouble is that in the process of exchanging music we have created quite a number of duplicates.
Is there a way to automate identifying and removing duplicate songs?

hi,
you aren't missing this. Show duplicates is NOT a tool to allow to simply select all and hit deleted. It is showing you the duplicates, one beside the other, to allow you to discriminate two songs having the same name but that may not be duplicate. For exemple, they may be two different version of a same song and that you want to keep them. For this reason, automated process are somehow risky to loose also song that you want to keep.
however, if you still want to proceed with an automated script, you can find some at http://dougscripts.com/itunes/.
Personnally, I would still discriminate duplicated songs manually by reviewing the list of "show duplicate" to avoid deletion of song I wish to keep. I also have a quite large library and found many songs having the same name and not being duplicates.

HT201253 My Nano is full and I can no longer sync more music. How do I delete duplicate songs on the Nano to make room for syncing more songs?

My Nano is full and I can no longer sync more music. How do I delete duplicate songs on the Nano to make room for syncing more songs?

I had the same problem today and was able to resolve it without having to do a restore or reset. The problem had something to do with my mail accounts. The upgrade reset my mail settings, switching both my gmail and my .mac mail to "archive all mail". I went into the General Settings, disabled that setting, and resynced the phone. The "other" storage allottment dropped back down to less than a gig.
Before you restore or reset, I would try that first.

Duplicate song with unknown symbol

I have one album in the Music app on my iPhone in where every song is duplicated. One of each set of duplicated songs has a round symbol to the right of the title - I can't find the symbol anywhere through the Apple support site or even a Google search. I cannot delete the songs with the symbol from my iPhone, but I am able to delete their duplicates if I want (although I haven't done so). The songs do not show up as duplicates in iTunes on my Mac. The symbol is grey - a little circle with a dot in the center. Can anyone tell me what the symbol is and how I get rid of the duplicate songs? Thank you!

Certainly with the v firmware a duplicate is defined as having the same title, artist and album tag. If any of these differ then it isn't a duplicate... so I'm surprised you're not finding this with the MTP firmware.
It might perhaps be with the MTP firmware it can't tolerate the same filename so this is worth double checking (whereas on the v2 firmware it doesn't care).
Also triple check the tags on these supposed duplicate files using some good tagging software, that will show both the v and v2 tag.
Are these MP3 files?

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...

HT2905 Delete duplicate songs with exact same date

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