Many Copies of Same Song

When I copie songs from my hard drive or CD to my i-tunes it makes at least two copies of every song. How do I make it so I get one copie of every song?

Gregg, I had the same problem when I moved my library from my internal to an external hard drive. I had to go through and delete everything. I used to move the external drive back and forth between my two computers but everytime I did that it would create another copy of the same song, there were some songs that I was ending up with 5 or 6 copies of, it was horrible. I went from having 23 gigs of music to over 80, and that was on my hard drive, not just in iTunes. I ended up taking about 3 days to go through and delete everything from my music folder on the drive rather than trying to do it using iTunes. It was a pain. I haven't had that problem again since I stopped moving the drive.

Similar Messages

Library uploads up to 4 copies of same song...help

ok when I go to upload music to my library for some reason i get anywhere from 2 to 4 copies of the same song in the playlist...wht on earth is going on.
is this how many copies of music i have on the HD or something?

Well hold on - all is not lost. Until you find out what is happening you can delete Duplicates in iTunes : in the main Library List view find one of your duplicated songs; select all except one of the copies and press Command-backspace - when it asks "Move to Trash?" click that. You can either repeat that for each song or use one of the Doug scripts to do it for you.
http://dougscripts.com/itunes/itinfo/dupin.php
As for where the duplicates come from, to find out what is happening, you had best write out EXACTLY how you use iTunes, i.e. importing songs (ALL the steps you take - just saying "Add to Library" isn't enough - add WHAT to Library, exactly? Where from?), how you rip CDs, where else you get music from, what you do to Play your music, etc etc. Unless you give a FULL description it is near impossible to see what is happening.

Multiple copies of same songs in itunes

i-tunes is showing multiple copies of the same songs in the library....any ideas why? Not all songs have multiple copies, which is even stranger!
Also, other than working through manually and deleting the duplicates (2,500!), is there a way I can delete them with a simple command?
The song files are held on an external drive, to free up space on the c.
Any ideas.....?
Windows XP Pro

First in iTunes select the main library list on the left side in the source list. Now goto Edit menu and select "Show DUplicate songs".
Now if you have ! marks beside songs, then these songs are dead/broken links and there are scripts you can run to auto remove them. SOmetimes the mark will not show til you try to play it.
If theres no marks, It'll be hard. These alot of scripts to remove duplicates in the Mac version of iTunes but none I personally know of for the windows version, you have to manually go thru it all.
Rictclick each dup and hit "Get Info" to see there location, you may have multiple copys of the same song in different locations. The Location of the songs will be listed on the summery tab.

Multiple copies of same song, how to delete?

I have multiple copies of all my music. I am not sure how this happened. Yet when I try to delete any of the copies, I am unable to play the songs in iTunes.
Is there a way to automatically remove all copies of the same song? A setting to change to allow me to delete the copies, yet retain the file?

if you only have 1 actual version of the file on your disk, but have multiple entries in itunes, then just select all but 1 of the mulitple entries, hit delete, and when it asks you whether to 'keep files' or 'move to trash' click on keep files,
This then only deletes the 'link' to the files. and should leave your itunes looking tidier with 1 remaining link in the list.
If you DO have loads of the actual .mp3 file saved too, you can use the menu item, "View > Show Duplicates" to find them (you can do that anyway if you like). but when you delete them tell it to 'send to trash' if you want the files binning too.
To address the problem of how you ended up with all these files, maybe you need to let itunes manage your library for you? (if it doesn't already?)
under preferences there is a general tab under advanced options asking you whether to keep music oganized & copy files to the library when imported. with both these boxes checked it's easier to keep track of stuff and not get multiple copies going on.
Also make sure the path to your library is pointing to the right folder under the itunes music location heading on the same preference page. Then go back to iTunes and hit the menu "Advanced > Consolidate Library".
this will make sure everything that appears in your iTUNES lists, is actually kept in the iTunes library, and again makes it easier not to get thiings muddled up.
good luck
dan

Cannot remove extra copies of same songs

iTunes 11.1.3 (8)
64 - bit
Hi,
In my itunes library "On This iPhone" there are 3 or 4 copies of each song.
In the past I would have clicked something like "Name" on "Categories" (top line of iTunes library where it says "Name, Album, Artist") etc.
Now it seems that the categorys are all disabled and I canot click them to sort the order of the music.
There is also a mix of some songs being in black and some in greyed out.

If you are only talking about a few duplicates see this article: iTunes - Finding and removing duplicate items
If you are talking about a lot of duplicates have a look at Teridon's iTunes Scripts, Robert has a script in there for dealing with duplicates which might be of some help: Teridon's iTunes for Windows Scripts
Just note: The duplicate eliminator in Robert's scripts package only works for these two kinds of duplicates:
1) Multiple copies of the exact same file (e.g. "Song.mp3" and "Song 1.mp3", where "Song 1.mp3" is simply a copy of Song.mp3
2) Multiple entries in the iTunes Library for the exact same file.
The script does nothing for duplicates that are the same song, but different files (e.g. encoded by someone else, has different artwork or other tags, etc.)
There are also some third party programs out there, like "Dupe Eliminator" that might help in more complicated cases. If you do a quick web search I'm sure you'll find more: Dupe Eliminator

Multiple Copies of Same Song/Movie

Every time I sync something new to my AppleTV I see many, many copies of that item on the device interfaces. It seems to fix itself after a while, but I have no idea how/why.
I also have to say that the fact that the pin entry on screen in BIG FRIGGING NUMBERS is absolutely stupid. I have to send my kids out of the room to buy anything. Why not allow for a directional pin that does not appear on the screen? Up, Up, Down, Down or something like that. Of course, Apple will simply ignore this idea because Apple ignores everyone because Apple assumes it can do no wrong.

I just bought AppleTV a couple of weeks ago. The 160GB model. I too have noticed that when I sync (add) to the AppleTV there are multiple copies of it in the "My Movies" List. I checked the content that I have on the AppleTV through iTunes and it shows that I only have one copy of it. So I think there is a software bug that displays it multiple times.
Last night I bought "Zodiac" When I turned the TV on this morning I saw 8 zodiac listings on the AppleTV. I just purchased "No Country for Old Men". It is in the middle of downloading. I hope it doesn't show multiple listings.

Multiple Copies of Same Song:

Hi,
The title may indicate that this is probably a redundant post... I don't think it is. I searched several terms with no success for my question. Here goes:
I'm curious about why I have two folders per artist: one in /Home/Music/ and one in /Home/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/. Is this supposed to be the case? Also, if I search for a particular song name, like 'Chameleon' by Herbie Hancock, I find that there is one file in iTunes Music under 'Compilations' and two copies in Music, each in the Herbie Hancock folder:
Chameleon.m4a and Chameleon 1.m4a
I would hesitate to believe these are duplicates, as every song in my each of the artist folders in /Home/Music/ has two copies of itself a NAME.m4a and NAME 1.m4a. It also didn't seem like any of the versions were mere aliases - they all said MPEG 4 Audio File under type, not Alias...
Is this normal? I just started up iTunes, which says I have 11.49 GB of music, however the /Home/Music/ folder has 20.36 GB, telling me that it appears I have some duplicates.
Can I delete one or the other of the various artist folders?
Last, seriously last - sorry if this actually has come up and I missed it. I searched 'duplicate folders', 'duplicate artist folders' etc. to try to find a post that answered this and didn't see quite the same issue, mostly people wondering how to manage duplicate songs they imported off different CDs or named the artists just a bit differently so they got two artist folders within their iPods...
Thanks!
-John

Here's the post: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6975543&#6975543
It may not address your exact situation, but basically from what I gathered from it, if you have the option mentioned checked in your iTunes preferences, you can be reasonably assured that everything in iTunes was copied from elsewhere and iTunes has maintained it's own version. I guess in your case, you may want to look through iTunes, and if you don't see anything glaringly missing, delete the things in /Music/ because iTunes has copied it's own version into /Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/.
This is at least my take. I probably don't have as much music as you do - it took me about 10 minutes to open two finder windows next to each other and go through the Music folder, check to see if a folder for the same artist/album existed in iTunes Music folder and delete the duplicates. I had about 10GB of music (unique music, that is... the Music folder had about 20GB from the duplicates). Depending on how much you have you may or may not want to do this!
Also, check out Consolidating your library (from iTunes, Advanced > Consolidate Library). I believe this searches your system for music/photos not in iTunes and puts them in if they are not and leaves them alone if they already are. The you can be sure that everything you need is in the iTunes folder and delete all the rest. I'm sure the help file would say more about this option.
Good luck!
-John

ITunes copying same songs and apps every sync

Every single time I sync my iPhone 4s (iOS 6) to iTunes 11 (OS 10.6.8) it copies the same songs and apps to my iTunes. Like right now it says "Syncing Danielle's iPhone (Step 5 of 5)" and right below that "Copying 8 of 10: MC3" (which stands for the app, Modern Combat 3). No more than 5 minutes ago I was syncing my iPhone and it was copying that app (it takes forever too because it's a big file). All I changed was adding some calendar events on my macbook in iCal then I wanted to sync it again real quick and it's copying all of these files again that it just did.
One of the problems could be that I have it removed from my iPhone but it's still checkmarked in iTunes? I can't see how that would be practical though. I would think that if I deleted a song on my iPhone, or deleted an app, that when it connected to iTunes next it would make a note that I don't want it on my phone anymore. Anyone know the source of the issue?

Some other program is interfering with itunes saving its database file.
iTunes Library.itl
This is really common for Sony Vaio users running Vista. Either disable the Vaio's music service program (VCFw.exe), or uninstall it, as Evert Yntema chose to do.
See this post
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8545376&#8545376
And for folks who don't have a Vaio, the next biggest culprit is security or backup software scanning the itunes folders. You need to configure
Norton/Symantec
McAfee
Kaspersky
ESET NOD
IObits
Windows Live OneCare
Carbonit
Mozy
or whatever software you've got installed to ignore the itunes folder or specifically, that ITL file.
If you're getting tons of TMP files, something is interfering with itunes saving the ITL file. A workaround is to same that ITL file to a different folder or USB drive just before you close itunes.

I borrowed a hard drive from a friend that contains many thousands of songs. Somehow when tranferring these to iTunes I managed to get several copies of each song. How can i do a bulk delete of all the copies leaving just one version of each song?

I need help please. I borrowed a hard drive from a friend which contains many thousands of songs. When adding them to my iTunes library I somehow managed to make multiple copies of each song. Is there a way to do a bulk delete of all the duplicates? If I have to go one by one it will take a lifetime.

I have the same problem. I keep backups on a home server and this is where my library pointed to. I changed it to the local drive and now I have two copies in the library. I need to either bulk delete or clear the library (without deleting the files) and then rebuild. How do I do either of these things?

How can I remove multiple copies of the same song from the iTunes listing?

How can I remove multiple copies of the same song from the iTunes listing. The program seems to be picking up the same songs from, for example, my user area and my public area in the C drive

As above, Apple's official advice is here... HT2905 - How to find and remove duplicate items in your iTunes library, however it is a manual process and the article fails to explain some of the potential pitfalls.
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/merge ratings, play counts and playlist membership. See this thread for background 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)
tt2

Can I purchase multiple copies of the same song

I want to purchase multiple copies of the same song to avoid copyright issues if I make a mixed cd and give it away.

As above, Apple's official advice is here... HT2905 - How to find and remove duplicate items in your iTunes library, however it is a manual process and the article fails to explain some of the potential pitfalls.
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/merge ratings, play counts and playlist membership. See this thread for background 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)
tt2

I now have two copies of the same song in iTunes. One is "Matched" and one is "Purchased." How do I remove one, and which one should I remove?

I subscribe to iTunes Match. One day a couple months ago I noticed that my iTunes library was populated by a new collection of songs. Songs I already had and were identified as Matched. All of a sudden, I not only had the"Matched" copy, but also another copy labelled "Purchased." When I went to "View" --> Duplicates, sure enough there was about 180 songs that had been added to duplicates. All 180 were identified as "Purchased" and all were identified as purchased on the same date. That common date was often several years after the date associated with the Matched version. ALL had the SAME purchase date. No one in our house of 4 Mac computers sharing the same Apple Account and having the same iTunes libraries had purchased any songs on that date...7/19/13. All at around 10:30 PM, plus or minus a minute.
Has anyone had this same experience? I tried to remove the "Matched" copy of each song knowing that the "Purchased" copy would not count to my iTunes Match total. But, that didn't work. It appears I am stuck with both copies.
When the recent update to iTunes (v11.0.5) came out, I thought it may address this issue. No go. I still have all these duplicates of the same song. I mean...THE SAME SONG! AT least as far as I can tell by checking all the information associated with each. Same name, same artist, same everything. As far as I can tell, there is nothing that could "fake out" iTunes Match to think these were different versions.
And ideas what happened and what I can do?

Hello mracole,
I checked my "purchases" and the 7/19/13 purchases don't show up. However, the earlier versions from usually several years back...the ones that are Matched...often do show up in my Purchases. I suspect that somehow those REALLY purchased several year old versions were deleted and redownloaded by me so I could change them to the 256 kbps versions under iTunes Match. They were probably 128 kbps versions originally when purchased.
Why the earlier versions that were really purchased are now identified as Matched is puzzling.
Why I now have Purchased versions from 7/19/13 is puzzling too...especially since these versions do NOT show up in my purchases.
Calling Apple Support if a good idea unless someone can explain this mystery. I might even take one of my laptops to the Apple store and show a Genius.
Thank you very much for taking the time to respond, Mr. Luigi

How to delete the many versions of the same song?

Help please, how do I delete old versions of a song? When I add to or tweak a piece, I first save it with a new name, like song 1, then song 2, etc. so that I have a copy of every change. This takes up space when I have 50 versions each of 10 songs. Now my hard drive is down to 7.4 and I was told to keep it in the double digits. I went to Logic,
chose the song from the next column, then in the next column filled with versions of the same song, I selected one, like old version 1, hit delete and nothing happened. I held down the apple key too and hit delete. Nothing. HELP please. I have not used this before but my 1-1 has ended since Apple won't allow renewals anymore. Also. I have all versions saved on 2 external hard drives.
D

Hi,
now first you'll need the right permissions for the folder where your songs are stored. I assume that you have the read/write permissions (or supervisor permissions).
Let's assume your songs are named "songxversiony.logic". They will reside in a main folder named "songx" containing all the "songxversiony.logic" files, and there will be subfolders called "audio files" "bounces" "Fade files" "Project File Backups" "Sampler Instruments" (maybe) and "Undo Data" and maybe one or two others.
1st: Usually, Logic stores your songs in /(your username)/music/Logic/... , so please open your finder and look if they are there.
2nd: You can delete all unneeded "songxversiony.logic" files from the finder. This should be possible by hitting the delete button. Otherwise check your permissions.
3rd: Now getting rid of the Song file (xy.logic) won't delete the really big Disk-Hogs, which are the Audio Files you used in earlier versions (but don't need them anymore). They still reside in the "Audio Files" subfolder.
4th: Fire up Logic, load your Project. Tap the "B" key to open the Bin and there you'll have all the audio files that ever were used in your project. Now many of them aren't needed anymore. So *within the bin* hit Shift-U to select all unused Audio files (or in the menu: edit -> select all unused). Hit DEL to remove them from the bin.
5th: Now these hogs are *still there* (what the...? ) To finally get rid of them, go to Logic's Menu bar: File -> Project -> clean up. You will be asked if you really want to delete the unused files, and yes, off they go to the trash.
You may also look inside the bounces folder if there are old bounces you don't need anymore.
Problem solved.
Fox

Since downloading 11.0.1 (12), Itunes can't locate or play many songs but the same songs still play on my synched iPod.

Since downloading Itunes 11.0.1 (12), Itunes can't locate or play many songs but the same songs still play on my synched iPod. I have a MacBook Air, Lion OS, Itunes version 11.0.1 (12). I didn't see this problem with older versions of Itunes. I do not manually change the organization of the Itunes library. I use the Itunes "add to library" feature or Amazon's MP3 downloader. Sometimes, however, I have changed song information in the "info" window. Such as unchecking the "compilation" button and sorting by artist (for that song), so that I can search by artist in the top pane of Itunes (otherwise the song is sorted in an album that is a "compilation," but not under the name of the artist who sang a particular song. I've done this without problem in the past, but perhaps the newer version of Itunes can't handle the changes I made and has lost track of where the older version of Itunes stored such songs? How do I fix all these older previously ok changes if that's the case... If I could just find where they are stored in Itunes it would be easier perhaps. I've looked in compilations, unknown artist, and so forth to no avail. And Finder search can't find them.
Details: suddenly, many songs are marked with "!," denoting that Itunes cannot find the songs in the library and cannot play them. Oddly, my iPod CAN play the "unlocatable" songs with no problem (it has been synched "post problem"). So the songs are still there somewhere in the Itunes library. This problem occurs by album, that is, all songs from the same album become unlocatable, although different albums by the same artist may still be found and played.
Exploring the Itunes library to try to locate the missing albums/songs, I discovered that generally there is no longer any folder specified for any artist associated with a missing album [artist is the top level of organization and album is the second; compilations are in the same folder]. This is true even if I have other albums from the same artist which Itunes IS able to locate. I cannot find a single song/album by such artists anywhere in the Itunes file system, even the ones that Itunes can still play. If I right click and "get info" for an unlocatable song, I get a notification box that asks if I want to locate the file. If I click "no," next thing-- the info window for the song pops up, with all the correct info (including sort info, which I double check)! Why is Itunes able to locate all the info on the song, but is not able to play the MP3 file?
Using Finder I cannot locate the songs that are unlocatable by Itunes (except the original download files in the Amazon MP3 folder). Finder is, of course, able to find Itunes songs that Itunes has no trouble locating. What's up?! My iPod can find them just fine. I just synched my iPod again and am playing the "unlocatable" songs right now.
I can "fix" most of these files by downloading files one by one into Itunes from my Amazon download folder or from my CDs using the "add to library" feature. In fact, it is strange. But this will take a very long time! And what if this problem continues recurring? But something strange happens when I implement this fix. I added one song to Itunes (from the Amazon MP3 folder, using "add to library") for one "unlocatable" album of Pete Seegers. After adding that one song, I looked at the Itunes music library and discovered that a folder for Pete Seeger (which was not there before I added the song) had been newly created, or restored. In this folder was the one song I had just added, but ALSO all my other Seeger albums that had previously remained "locatable" by Itunes. But the other "unlocatable" songs were not restored, unfortunately.

I have found a workaround. When I create a new playlist, iTunes allows me to add or remove songs from existing playlists for a short while. Then, for some reason it prevents me from adding and deleting songs again. Not sure why. Go figure.

Why do I have multiple copies of the same song?

When I open my iTunes on my iPad I have multiple copies of the same song. It seems that when I connect and sync to my computer that it does not recognize that the song is already on my iPad, so it sends another copy. When I try to delete the second copy from my iPad by swiping to the left and hitting delete, it doesn't delete and I see the cloud icon like it wants to down load if from the cloud automatically again. How can I clean this mess up?

Hi R_3S,
Welcome to the Apple Support Communities!
It sounds like your Music application is showing your previously purchases music, with the cloud icon, on your iPad as well as what is synced onto it. Please follow the instructions in the following article to turn off Show All Music.
iTunes Match - iPhone
http://help.apple.com/iphone/7/#/iph6e2dfb83
Just show music that’s been downloaded from iCloud. Go to Settings > Music, then turn off Show All Music.
Have a great day,
Joe

Many Copies of Same Song

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