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dkranz

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 8, 2010
5
0
What is a good program to clean up iTunes library?
Duplicates is my biggest problem (273 Gig)!
 

obsidian1200

macrumors 6502
Jun 19, 2010
359
0
Albuquerque, NM
If you don't mind doing it yourself, you can tell iTunes to show you the duplicate tracks by going to File>Display Duplicates and you can select the ones you wish to delete yourself. Although, depending on how itunes chooses to organizes the tracks (I'd recommend date added to help sort the tracks, then you can highlight and batch delete the tracks), I can see how this method isn't for everyone.

I've also seen other member recommend the application Dupin for this particular situation.
 

dkranz

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 8, 2010
5
0
There are several programs to clean up your iTunes music. Each claims to be the best. Anyone have suggestions as to which program works the best for deleting the correct duplicate as well as the other clean features?
 

Geithals

macrumors newbie
Oct 1, 2011
1
0
There are several programs to clean up your iTunes music. Each claims to be the best. Anyone have suggestions as to which program works the best for deleting the correct duplicate as well as the other clean features?
I don't know which one works the best as I have only tried one, dupin from Dougs scripts. It was free then, alas a lite version of it costs usd8 nowadays.
The lite version works fine. Does the job, damage free.
I don´t know what other 'clean features' you would want to use.
Basically dupes are about the only issue that a user would need help with because of the tedious nature of doing it manually, especially if you have identical keeper tracks.

ps. I never noticed that File - display duplicates - before. And as I have no dupes at present, all purged with dupin, I have no idea how it works.
 

dkranz

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 8, 2010
5
0
other things like fixing missing info and tracks, album art, etc.
 

Jefferyd32

macrumors regular
Jul 22, 2009
140
14
Seattle, WA
I recently moved my entire library, about 120gb, from my macbook to a Mac Mini to use as a server and somehow I lost a ton of info. The tracks are all still there, but artist, album etc. .. all disappeared. I am hoping when I tunes match is released when I upload my songs I'll be able to get the info back, otherwise it is 2,000 songs worth of track naming I have to do.
 

obsidian1200

macrumors 6502
Jun 19, 2010
359
0
Albuquerque, NM
I recently moved my entire library, about 120gb, from my macbook to a Mac Mini to use as a server and somehow I lost a ton of info. The tracks are all still there, but artist, album etc. .. all disappeared. I am hoping when I tunes match is released when I upload my songs I'll be able to get the info back, otherwise it is 2,000 songs worth of track naming I have to do.

That's a really odd occurrence! If you haven't deleted the library from your macbook, you can always try again. If manually copy and pasting still doesn't work, you should be able to import the songs via home share and retain the metadata.

Otherwise, I'm not sure what kind of software could help you tag music that doesn't have the appropriate track name. You might want to check out Tagalicious, since it supposedly analyzes the audio of the track to determine what metadata to fetch for it.
 

philipt42

macrumors 6502
Jun 26, 2009
263
0
RI
Dupin works, but if you're really concerned about accuracy, you might want to just do it through iTunes.
 

pepitko

macrumors member
Dec 24, 2007
79
0
I have had pretty good experience with TuneUp for missing cover arts and mislabeled music and they have, part of the package is DeDuper, which analyzes your whole library and searches for duplicates.
 

ideal.dreams

macrumors 68020
Jul 19, 2010
2,374
1,073
I use Tagalicious by The Little App Factory. It won't delete duplicates but it did do a VERY good job in adding all missing information (album art, genre, artist, etc) to my songs.
 

seamer

macrumors 6502
Jul 24, 2009
426
164
music brainz/picard might be useful. has been using it for years before i tried something else (paid!) that made a total breakfast of the library.

so now im waiting for cloud/match to come live and do a library backup/restore on a new system. mostly for the same reasons you are. exporting thr library always leaves something out.

i just hope Match/cloud are clever enough with playlists and ratings...
 

marc55

macrumors 6502a
Oct 14, 2011
872
217
As I just found out, when you delete from itunes the default is "keep files", which deletes from the itunes list, but keeps the song on the hard drive; you must select "move to recycle bin" to permanently remove from your HD
 

h1r0ll3r

macrumors 68040
Dec 28, 2009
3,920
19
Maryland
I used Tune Up to clean up all my music files. I originally tried to do it manually but I have over 10,000 songs. Around song #50 I said screw it and bought a license for Tune Up instead.

Tune Up is about 90% accurate IMO. It'll nab the track listing numbers, cover art and whatever else data you want for the given song. Last time I checked it could only do 500 songs at a time? Might be different now but it was a limited set of songs you could process at a time.

The vast majority of my music was cleaned up and all the data points were filled in. Every once in awhile, specifically for cover art, it'll tag the weirdest photo to your song as cover art. Not an actual album cover, but a photo. It'll even add the TinyPic image where it says photo not available or something. Kinda weird but it's to be expected somewhat.

Overall, I thought Tune Up was well worth the price. You'll need to be careful when signing up since they automatically enroll you for another year once your subscription runs out. AND the software automatically tags every song with "Cleaned up by Tune Up" which gets quite annoying. You can disable it through the settings menu though.
 

thommie

macrumors newbie
Aug 12, 2011
4
0
here is an article which reviews some popular tools which help clean up iTunes.

I recently found out about TuneUp and have been very much willing to try it as at least it looks like a cool addition to iTunes. However, I have not heard too much great comments about that program. This is from their own support forums:

http://support.tuneupmedia.com/entries/20108867-do-not-purchase-tuneup

In fact many are not positive at all and I am now trying to see whether there is some alternative. I badly need to get rid of my duplicates in iTunes. Besides doesn't TuneUp only find artwork?
 
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