My iTunes has an artist duplicated, how do I fix this?

Question

I can't figure out why only one artist is duplicated ALL the time, every time I sync my iPhone. When I delete the song (from the iPhone) the iTunes app will crash, but ultimately I can't figure this out on my own. Help, please?

Answer 1

Don't panic - this post is not as ghastly as it first appears.
No idea why deleting an artist should cause your iTunes app (on your phone) to crash, but duplicated artists are often as a result of spelling differences, simple typing errors or even capitalisation. These can difficult to spot, even in iTunes on the computer. In some cases, all songs by an artist will be grouped together correctly in your iTunes Library, but split on iPhones and iPods.
Since you have posted in the iTunes For Windows community, I assume that you have all the songs (by the artist) in the Library (on the computer). Therefore, in your iTunes Library, check each song by the artist for the differences I mentioned (spelling, typing errors and capital letters). In addition, look for spaces at the end of the artist's name. In the examples below, which are different to one another, the full stop at the end of the line simply indicates the end of the text. in other words, the text ends in the character before the full stop:
The Infinity Project.
Infinity Project.
The Inifinty Project.
Infinity Project, The.
The Infinity Project.
The Infinity Project .
Note the last two in particular. Number 5 has a space before the artist name, while number 6 has a space after the artist's name (before the full stop). This may be accepted in your iTunes Library, but cause confusion on your iPhone. And just look how easy it is to not notice this.
A simple method for correcting this is to decide which version you want to use (in this case, number 1 is the correct version) and copy and paste it into the Artist field for every song by "The Infinity Project". Hopefully, you use Sync to manage your iPhone, in which case allow a Sync of the iPhone with the Library aftre you have made the corrections, and that should fix the problem.
Look at the screenshots of my experiment:
Picture A:
In the shot above, I have highlighted the album "Mystical Experiences" and have the Multiple Items view of the album (notice it states Multiple Item Information at the top of the panel). Everything is correct and the artist name appears in the Artist box. But now look at the next screenshot:
Picture B:
Notice that in this shot, the Artist field is blank. Look at the song that is selected (grey highlight to the left of the Multiple Item Information panel). Can you see that Infinity in the the artist's name now has a lower case letter. But now look at this next shot, which appeared while I was creating these examples:
Picture C:
The Artist name appears three times in the Artists browser column, but they each appear to be identical. Now count the number of songs shown in picture B and picture C. (Don't worry, I'll do it - there are ten in picture B, but only nine in picture C.) Wow! What's going on? (By the way, iTunes will not let me select the third "version" of the Artist name. It's a rogue entry, caused by this test example.)
Well, if I check the one song listed under the second "version" of the Artist name, and put my typing cursor in the Artist field, look where the cursor (the straight line) is placed.
Picture D:
Believe it or not, there is an extra space after the t in "project", just like example 6 above. If I take out the space (and make the entry look like example number 1, above), look what happens:
Picture E:
There is now only one entry for the artist in the Column Browser, and the cursor at the end of the artist name is now immediately after the letter t.
You may also need to check for these differences under the Sorting field. The shot below shows the Sorting information for the album we've been looking at:
Picture F:
You may notice the the word "the" is missing. That's okay, if we sort by the I in Infinity, that causes the artist The Infinity Project to appear under I and not T. As long as all the songs have the same text, there is no problem.
Once you have made any changes, Sync your iPhone with your iTunes Library in order for the changes appear on the phone.