Duplicate songs.... What do you do?

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Level 1

52 points

Duplicate songs.... What do you do?

Just wondering what the majority of people do with regard to duplicate songs.

I have many because tracks are often duplicated across albums from the same artist or compilation albums.

I like to keep albums complete, so if I play an album, I get the Full album playing, whereas if you delete duplicate tracks not all of the albums would be 'complete'...yes you hve all the tracks to that album but you cant play them in the order of the original album.

So what do most peopl do? keep the dups to keep the albums complete ...or delete them and accept incomplete albums?

And is this a possible feedback request for iTunes Features....aliases of duplicates within albums, so you only need to keep one copy on the hard drive? Thoughts?

Mac Pro 3.0Ghz 10Gb RAM 4 x 1Tb HD's, Mac OS X (10.5.6), FreeNAS servers and Other Windoze and Linux machines

Posted on May 9, 2009 11:32 AM

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Answer 1

Zevoneer

Level 9

52,705 points

May 9, 2009 11:34 AM in response to Neil Paisnel

Personally if a song appears on multiple albums then I keep the multiple versions. Having duplicates of a few tracks doesn't bother me. You can send feedback/feature requests directly to Apple at this link: Apple Product Feedback

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Answer 2

turingtest2

Level 10

278,263 points

May 9, 2009 12:29 PM in response to Zevoneer

Ditto... I keep a copy for each album.

tt2

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Answer 3

May 9, 2009 3:45 PM in response to Neil Paisnel

Interesting question. There are very few albums that I am interested in hearing as a whole and/or am interested in keeping intact in terms of their original release -- chiefly those which were released as albums on vinyl and which form part of the music of my youth.

Therefore I prefer to categorize some tracks as appearing on the original LP release rather than as part of a "Greatest Hits" or soundtrack compilation.

I don't understand why a track would be released on multiple albums though and still have any significance since normally there is the original release which is determined by the artist, producer and/or record company. Releases after that tend to be compilations and/or are licensed to third parties and generally have nothing to do with the artist's "vision."

My answer would be therefore -- no -- I don't keep duplicate tracks merely because they happen to appear on multiple albums which are compilations -- but I've got a massive library of about 40,000 songs. I also almost never want to listen to an album in its entirety more than once (if that) and the charm of iPOD and iTunes is the ability to create my own playlists -- either serendiptiously, through smart lists, through Genius or deliberately.

If I wanted to retain information of other releases of a particular track, I would note it in the Comments section and then I could use it to create a Smart Playlist by selecting those comments -- in effect it's a work around to your question of creating an alias -- if Comments noted that the track was also on Album X, a smart playlist would then be created -- you could create and delete the smart playlists as it suited you -- and or put them in folders for easier organization.

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Answer 4

Neil Paisnel Author

Level 1

52 points

May 10, 2009 2:40 AM in response to Helen Berman

Thanks for that, yes I like the idea of using comments and smart playlists. At the moment have not used any playlists, just tend to play an album at a time. maybe playlists are the way to go.

I keep all the duplicates too, but since I rip into ALAC/FLAC I was hoping to slim down the library a little.

I do not have a library that is quite as big as 40,000 racks yet, I am up around 15,000 tracks, but I am in the process of copying a lot of older vinyl over at the moment. Well I was, but that has stopped since getting the Mac, it is not able to accept audio through the Firewire input from my Sony amp. Windows did it fine, with no drivers or extra software, the Mac just ignores it entirely

Thanks for the input

Neil

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Answer 5

May 10, 2009 8:08 AM in response to Neil Paisnel

If you aren't using comments, smart playlists, playlists, ratings, you are missing (to me) the greatest part of having one's music in digital form with a searchable database enabling.

Again -- I am not sure why you are interested in keeping the "integrity" of compilation albums since most of them just represent a record company's way of re-purposing the original masters (nothing wrong with that of course).

Some of them are interesting in terms of providing one with education on genres -- i.e. a compilation of Chess or Stax-Volt masters; compilations of "roots" music or music that represents certain moods or themes. I couldn't live without my personalized workout playlists -- I rate and have several "smart" playlists so that I know which ones "work" for me and which don't.

I also keep several smart playlists going on music I haven't played yet and/or haven't played in X period of time -- music in X genres which I have rated highly -- all kinds of permutations. I especially appreciate the smart playlist of music I haven't played yet as this creates a constantly changing playlist of ALL genres which I generally listen to while in the car since this provides me with my most attentive listening opportunities -- I can rate it on the pod and when synched, my smart playlists take care of the rest -- I do really most enjoy the different genres although one can of course create smart lists limited to specific genres -- your specific listening needs and ingenuity are the only limitations.

I find "inspiration" for my playlists in all kinds of places -- iTunes for example does have its essentials in various genres, themes, music history etc. I wouldn't limit to the specific song/artist on iTunes list since that is to some extent arbitrary -- but it does provide a framework for discovering new music and/or putting music into different contexts -- for example, I have a smart playlist consisting of "covers".

Again, you always have the ability to create a playlist consisting of the album -- but I almost never go that route. At one time musicians did look at the LP as their canvas and the sum was greater than most of the parts but even then most albums consisted of songs that were put on the album in order to have an LP worth of material to release and/or to provide publishing income to each member of the band.

At any rate, try experimenting with playlists -- they are all erasable and changeable anyway and iTunes (at least in my experience and opinion) works best the more one personalizes it through comments, ratings, playlists and smart playlists rather than depending on what a record company puts out there.

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Answer 6

May 10, 2009 8:23 AM in response to Helen Berman

Not sure if my long winded discourse actually made the point I was attempting to -- for the most part the compilations I have made through the various tools of iTunes are far better than the ones that are created by a record company (or whatever) since those often have factors that I don't have to consider.

They can be interesting starting points but I generally then improve upon them since I am not hampered by their restrictions which often have to do with matters of commerce rather than artistry or historical significance.

Keep in mind that if one has noted that the track is part of additional albums, one always has the ability to duplicate it later on -- assuming one actually ones duplicate tracks in the itunes library taking up space -- rather than just recreating a compilation if one actually wants to hear those specific tracks in the specific order that a third party has ordained.

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Answer 7

Neil Paisnel Author

Level 1

52 points

May 10, 2009 9:57 AM in response to Helen Berman

Dont worry about being long winded with an answer.....that is my speciality too

I have not started using playlists yet for a very simple reason. I have only had the Mac for two months, and been using it for a month.

Under Windows I had been using Winamp to play and organise all my music, all in FLAC format. It has taken me till now to convert it all over to ALAC, and import and grab cover art.
I had about 150 albums that cover art could either not be found for, or was of really low res, so I had to go up to the attic, pull out the CD's and vinyl albums, setup tripod, lighting, camera etc, take the pics then crop/straighten/correct perspective errors, then apply to the relevant albums. OK, could have got a scanner, but the agro I have had so far with this Mac getting any existing hardware to work, that was one road I did not want to go down.

Under Windows all the music was stored in a folder structure, with separate folders for Vinyl rips, Compilation albums, single artist CD's, plus two folders of random downloaded mp3's not belonging to any albums in particular.

In order to make the initial import and organization of the music easier, I initially imported each separate folder into a different iTunes library, and checked cover art, correct naming of tracks, mark compilation tracks as 'part of comilation', diskNo X of X etc etc. I then combined the Vinyl, Compilation, and single artist Libraries into one.
I now just have the two random mp3's libraries left to sort/check for errors etc. I do believe the naming on a proportion of the tracks on one of these libraries is incorrect, so I do not want to combine them all together with my Main library just yet, and then have to weed them out later from amongst 12000 or so tracks. Much easier to do them while they are in their own library of 4000 odd tracks.

Across all these libraries, probably only about 60 % have genre info, so that is another job.

I am also trying to catalogue 20,000+ photos in iPhoto or Aperture or Picassa....yet to decide which to use
Also trying to learn Final Cut Express, get hardware working ( still cant get a Sony Amp firewire input to work), took two weeks to get a network printer to work, similar time to find a webcam that works with Mac and still searching for software to allow my girlfriend and myself to sync the phones to Mail/Address book, or alternative apps (yet to be decide on). As well as Time Machine backing up to an one of the internal 1TB drives, also want to use RsyncX/CarbonCopyCloner/SuperDuper to run nightly backups to a RAID 6TB FreeNAS box in the attic...

Switching to a new OS....oh what fun 🙂

Oh and I have to go to work as well 😉

I may get around to creating my own playlists one day...but for now playing whatever collection of tracks either the Record companies decide on or Genius produces is more than enough variation for me.

I did have a brief play this afternoon with using comments, then creating a smart playlist from those tracks, to 're create the album' but I DO like to have them played in order the original artist album had produced them. Cant immediately see a way to do that. Obviously not worried if the order of a compilation album is not per the original track listing of the compilation album, but I do like to play the Single artist albums in the order they were produced.

For now I will stick with multiple copies of the same track till I can figure out a better way...or the iTunes developers come up with an alias type option.

Thanks for your input, you have sparked an interest in creating playlists which I otherwise probably would not have done.

Neil

Message was edited by: Neil Paisnel

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Answer 8

May 10, 2009 10:33 AM in response to Neil Paisnel

There is a fix in terms of importing a number of tracks you want to "groom" at a later date. You can set up a smart list which contains only tracks imported on a certain day and that would in effect, isolate those tracks so that you can work on them at your leisure -- I sometimes groom with the news in the background or while being on hold on the telephone 🙂. You would then be able to be able to listen to the tracks whilst still preserving the "integrity" of the separate library.

As you probably know there are a number of columns that you can view -- you can add or subtract from any playlist by choosing the View in the pull down menu. You then can sort by clicking on a column so when I am trying to do some manual organization I might sort by date added, comments, rating -- and of course you can do a search for comments if you add those.

As for cover art, I will do a google of an album -- often amazon has it and then one can just cut and paste the image into the track or "drag" the image into the cover album box -- you just need to do a "get info" on a track and then there is a tab for artwork.

Regarding track order, I do keep the track order of the original album (to the extent that it is important to me). You can do this in the "get info" section -- and of course any playlist can be sorted automatically through clicking on the "columns" and/or by manually. I don't generally care about the order that it might later appear in on a compilation album of any kind.

Sympathy as to learning a new OS -- although it's well worth it.

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Answer 9

May 10, 2009 11:09 AM in response to Helen Berman

I wanted to add that conceptually your "folders" in winamp can be achieved through comments and smart playlists -- i.e. organizing music in various ways that make sense to you -- of course the "beauty" of play lists are that they are in effect creating "aliases" of the actual tracks since the same track can be on multiple playlists -- and can even appear multiple times on a single playlist.

The comments section can take multiple comments and I perhaps "comments" is a misnomer because I don't (for the most part) literally use that section to make a "comment" but rather add words or phrases that I can then pick up later in terms of organization for smart playlists or for searches. I have (for example) comments for tracks that are good for various occasions, moods or themes -- many of them are my own "words" -- i.e. carsong are those songs which relate to the American romance with the road and cars -- and picks up that theme in many genres although many of the specific tracks are also in other playlists as they span multiple genres, historical periods, mood, speed etc.

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Answer 10

May 10, 2009 11:43 PM in response to Neil Paisnel

I don't keep duplicates - It's simply a waste of space. Having the original on it's original album is enough for me.

I hadn't considered making playlists for the many compilation albums that feature in my library... That sounds like a good idea. There are some compilation albums I enjoyed hearing but which are now reduced to only 3-4 tracks where duplicate tracks appear on their original albums. I'll give that a go.

I think I'd prefer though to be able to create an "album" in the main library by linking to the duplicate tracks at their original location. This way they would appear to be a complete album in the main view...

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Answer 11

May 10, 2009 11:52 PM in response to Made in England

This would also allow the appropriate artwork to be assigned to the "collection"...

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Answer 12

Neil Paisnel Author

Level 1

52 points

May 11, 2009 12:14 AM in response to Made in England

Google for cover art, yes, and also I use
http://www.freecovers.net/

But still, often many albums I have are not available....or small 200 x200 size images. Taking my own photos at 10MB, and 3000 x 2800 (or whatever) and editing them to suit, was my solution. In fact the quality in most cases was better, so good in fact i am considering going through all the album art and doing my own images for the lot.

Made in England wrote:

I think I'd prefer though to be able to create an "album" in the main library by linking to the duplicate tracks at their original location. This way they would appear to be a complete album in the main view...

Yes, that is what I would like to do also, but do not see that is possible yet. Could get difficult tin the implementation, with regard to file naming though. Each file would in effect have to have two different sets of Cmd-I data. What would probably be needed would be another tab ( Also on.....) 'on the track file info (CMD-I Page) that allowed you to input data from other album. I would envisage a separate tab, that had a PLUS symbol, (similar to how you add arguments to smart playlist). Each click of the Plus would add another line that allowed you to add details such as Album name, Album Art, disk x of y, track a of b, part of a compilation etc.
All the basic stuff (Artist, track name,genre year etc would still be on the front info page.

Regarding mixing/combining all the libraries though, think I will keep the libraries separate for the moment though. Thanks for the idea though.

Neil

Message was edited by: Neil Paisnel

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Answer 13

May 11, 2009 5:45 AM in response to Neil Paisnel

For artists like the beatles who have many complications, albums etc i keep everything even the hole duplicate album of there number one hits. But for bands like coldplay where there are songs of theirs on compilations of various other artists and i already have that song i will delete it. but i like to keep albums complete.

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Answer 14

May 12, 2009 12:11 PM in response to Neil Paisnel

I don't know about the technical side of things but going back to the playlist solution couldn't it just be a simple option of being able to allocate alternate artwork to a playlist? In the case of a bona fide official compilation - the appropriate artwork, where you have created a personal playlist you could create and allocate your own designs. When being played from the playlist the song would show that artwork.

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Answer 15

Neil Paisnel Author

Level 1

52 points

May 13, 2009 12:43 AM in response to Made in England

I did create a few smart playlists to re create compilation albums, but I like to keep all albums in correct original order and I cant see a way to do this.

This is why the Extra tabs on the Info page of each track would work. But that would involve more currently non existant tags in the metadata

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