Issue with duplicate songs in Music app

[iChillax]

Hey everyone,

I'm dealing with an issue that's extremely frustrating. My songs are being duplicated on my iPhone 5s and I can't figure out how to make sure there's only 1 copy on it. This is how it's appearing on my iPhone with one hard copy and the other being from the cloud. I'm currently running the most up-to date iOS.

Does anyone know how to fix this?

 

[iChillax]

Anyone?

 

[MacknTosh]

Do you use iTunes Match? I have in the past, and never renewed my subscription. I found that after subscribing to iTunes Match that I was getting multiple copies of the same song on my iPhone - for some albums, I found that I had up to 3 copies of every song!! I don't know how it happened, but I could only solve this problem by switching off iTunes match, deleting all music on my iPhone and then re-synching the music back onto my iPhone via iTunes.

As it happens, when Apple Music started, I took advantage of the free trial, and within days noticed that I was again getting multiple tracks duplicated on my iPhone. Not surprisingly, I decided not to start paying for a subscription.

I can't help but think that when Match or Music were used, songs were getting uploaded to the Cloud, and then pushed back onto the phone, even though a copy already existed on the phone (doesn't quite explain how I was frequently getting up to 3 copies, but I don't have particularly high expectations when it comes to having Apple manage my music library via the Cloud...).

 

[The Equalizer]

It's been reported on here a few times - you have to switch on "Only offline music" in Playlists.
I'm on 9.0, crucially I also have to kill and restart the music app for it to pick up the changes.

 

[Shirasaki]

I have seen this too. The only difference is I buy music from iTunes Store, and here I have duplicates of purchased songs. No duplicates for synced ones.
Now I am in iOS 9.3 b6, and I can see no duplicates. That doesn't mean upgrading to iOS 9.3 could solve this problem though.

 

[roccobladr]

I had similar issues as I had iTunes Match in the past but did not renew and now have Apple Music. Here's how I fixed it but note that this may not necessarily be your best option...

Go to the album (or individual song) that is a duplicate.
Hit the three little dots
Press delete
If you are on Apple Music you can just download it again/add to your library.


I'm not sure of the long term ramifications of this such as what happens when I stop using Apple Music as some of these songs are ones that I have uploaded to the cloud from iTunes Match but for me it's worth the hassle of not having duplicates and I have a backup on my hard drive anyway.