Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Removing Duplicates in iTunes

maclovin'

maclovin'

macrumors regular
Original poster
So I know about the actual menu item in iTunes, but I'd like to know if there was a way to only remove true duplicates, not the same song on a different album. Like I there is one song from a particular artist that is on 3 different albums, is there any way to have all three songs read from only one file in the HDD? That way, the song would be a part of every album, but it wouldn't take up my HDD space. I could probably do this manually by deleting those other two files, and then "locating" them when iTunes can't find it, but this would take forever. So is there any app that does such a thing? Or am I dreaming?

Thanks
 
iTunes open, file, show duplicates. Look at them closely, and see which are true duplicates from same album. Then delete one of them. It does show ALL duplicates of songs, but you don't have to delete all of them. An example I have of duplicates as you mention, from different albums. I can live with the 2 songs for that sake.
 

Attachments

  • Picture 1.png
    Picture 1.png
    30.9 KB · Views: 142
I do the same

iMac-Knight said:
iTunes open, file, show duplicates. Look at them closely, and see which are true duplicates from same album. Then delete one of them. It does show ALL duplicates of songs, but you don't have to delete all of them. An example I have of duplicates as you mention, from different albums. I can live with the 2 songs for that sake.
Click to expand...

I do the same thing. Click show duplicates, sort by track name and carefully go through and delete the duplicates. This way you can easily see the albums/artists and not delete remakes or live versions.
 
Well...I guess I'll just have to do it manually then. If anyone finds any program that will do this(or want to program it themselves 😉), let me know. Thanks.
 
maclovin',

I've tried to get my iTunes library under control with the elimination of duplicates as well, with some measure of success. I opted to use the open-source app fdupes.

It did not entirely eliminate all duplicates, but it did help and I mention it here in case it can be of use to you. If you're interested here is a little guide I wrote.
 
Hmm, an interesting read, I'll have to keep my eye out for a good solution, perhaps it could compare histograms or something. Use length or quality as discerning factors, broad and narrow phase culling... if only i had time 😛
 
try this first

so i was wondering this same question, and came across an answer that allowed me to get rid of 20 gigs of dupes with out any external programs. say you have 1 or 2 duplicates of the same song, show the items in finder, there is a good chance the file name is " song.mp3"or "song.m4p". and the file type is irrelevant . so i found that a lot of my songs were like this, " song.m4p,and song1.m4p". the "song1.m4p"is the dupe. so i just typed "1.m" in the search window in harddrive and pulled up all the files that started with 1.m or 2.m or so on and all the files that came I deleted after cross checking several times and did the procedure to remove the dead files from itunes. bam 20 gigs of space from duplicated music 🙂 please tell me if this helps or if i have to explain it a lil more in detail ........
 
Just a tip:

Not assuming you DO pirate music, because I sure don't. 😉

But when you download an album, make sure you do not just pull the entire folder into iTunes. Some torrents I have found, contain an .m3u file. This file is a playlist file of the same songs you just downloaded, and will add the same somes from the containing folder.
Thus creating duplicates.

Always make sure you check the folder contents for the .m3u file.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back