Massive duplicate playlists

Recently, after upgraing to Itunes match, I created a new playlist on my iphone in error (imatch activated), and didn't add any songs to it. the title of this blank playlist was "flight" and I didnt delete it at the time right away. A few days later, I noticed in iTunes (imatch activated) that there were hundreds of blank playlists called "flight." These were being synced from that single playlist I made on my iphone. I also noticed that my iphone now had hundreds of that playlist on it. I was simply able to delete these playlists in itunes by manually holding down delete.
Now, yesterday, I all of a sudden noticed that these blank playlists have returned, but they have exponentially increased to over 14,000! Because there are so many, it is really slowing down itunes and deleteing a single playlist (and I assuming syncing to match) takes several seconds. I have tried downloading an applescript from dougscripts.com to batch delete them- but it has now been 24 hours since I have had it running and I ended up stopping it beause it was bogging down my system and I wasn't sure it was working (itunes was frozen).
Why are all these playlists being duplicated exponentially? And more importantly, is there a quick and easy way to remove them? And how do I remove them while preventing them from showing up again? I am prepared to completely reset and rematch all my library, but that doesn't account for all the playlists that are already in the could.

The only thing that worked for me was:
1. Turn off iTunes Match on both my iPhone and iPad
2. Turn off iTunes Match in iTunes (from the Store menu, select Turn Off iTunes Match)
3. Restart the iPhone, iPad, and iTunes (or computer)
3. Re-sync iPhone and iPad with iTunes.
I had some issues re-syncing but restarting the computer helped.
Bottom line, turn-off iTunes Match completely everywehre. If I turn it on again, the duplicate playlists re-appear.
Hope this helps until Apple resolved this issue.

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Help...I can't get rid of duplicate playlists on my ipod..

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Duplicate Playlists

Duplicate playlists
When you create a new playlist, especially if you create it on an iOS device, i found that the list gets duplicated—in my case 25,000 times (as described in thisApple Support Communities thread ). The duplicates are empty, but they still take up a lot of listing space and are obviously annoying. Whats worse is the duplicates cause my I0S devices and my PC running itunes to crash.
Apple's response is delete them manually, its impossible as every time you delete one, it crashes itunes.
The symptom are linked to iTunes Match. In fact if i turn itunes Match off everything is fine. Its all fair and good that the post above helps you fix it, but what if your not a MAC user. We urgeltly need this bug fixed or a script that will run on windows.

You mean something like KillEmptyPlaylists?
If iTunes crashes when you remove them by hand I can't guarantee my script will fare any better. I'd disable iTunes Match while it is operating if that's a thing you can do.
tt2

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How do I get rid of 100's of duplicate PLAYLISTS?

How do I get rid of 100's of duplicate PLAYLISTS?

Have you subscribed to iTunes Match? There is a bug that can sometimes create hundreds of duplicate empty playlists. I've two scripts which might help you clean up: KillEmptyPlaylists and KillTopLevelPlaylists. This post describes a technique for resetting iTunes Match to stop it happening again.
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Hi Muds,
Welcome to the Support Communities!
The articles below may be able to help you with this.
Click on the links to see more details and screenshots.
How to find and remove duplicate items in your iTunes library
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2905
Deleting files from the iTunes library and your computer
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3842
Cheers,
- Judy

Why do I get duplicate playlists on my iPod nano?

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itunes created 1500 duplicates of my playlists.

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(If you don't see the menu bar press ALT to show it temporarily or CTRL+B to keep it displayed.)
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What if you try this
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"I'd rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not." Kurt Cobain (1967-1994)

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Holy Smokes:
I appreciate your detailed workaround post. My question is this: I use iTunes to keep everything organized (though I'm well aware of the shortcomings...) and can use the simple solution that Chris from CA posted, but I don't have room to consolidate everything. My read on consolidating is that you copy from wherever you have your music located (and right now my music is outside of the MyMusic/iTunes folder, as that backs up to my work server) and so you have to have enough room for all of your music to be copied (and then you delete it from its prior location). That's how Apple describes it in, e.g., http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301748. I ain't go that kind of room. Is there any way to make the move to a completely different PC by following the simple option? From the posting I just linked it sounds like you MUST consolidate whether you use you iPod to move things or use an external drive.
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How can I import an m3u playlist into iTunes that intentionally contains duplicate tracks? I want the duplicates in this case.

For instance, if my M3u file looks like the 2 lines below, only one copy of the mp3 file is imported. I'd like the same track to be imported twice.
Back To Black.mp3
Back To Black.mp3
btw, the reason I'd like this to work is that I use a separater track in playlists between groups of similar tracks. This separater is not being imported correctly as is being unhelpfully recognised as an unwanted duplicate.
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I just did the following.
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Made a new empty playlist in a test iTunes library which did not contain the files and dragged the m3u file to that playlist.
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Massive duplicate playlists

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