Removing duplicate songs

Great Stuff here thanks.

On a similar note, I have many duplicates. Some I had accidentally added to my library several times (I know, I'm impatient and stupid sometimes). Others are the same in titles from different albums, say the original album and a greatest hit.

Now when I have tried to delete these duplicates, I used the date added key to get a handle on when I got the track versus when I added it to the computer (amazon automatically adds music to itunes) but then the worst thing happened and say tracks one, three, seven, and nine stayed in one folder and two, five, six, eight, and ten stayed in another folder. I call it the zipper. Is there a way to clean up the files on my hard drive and then re importing the cleaned library.

Finally, why does itunes allow duplicate files anyways. So frustrating!

Thanks

Larry

OS 10.7.3 2.66 GHz Intel Core I7 laptop

Hi Randili. You might find my thoughts in this thread can help you refine your deduping AppleScript...

tt2

larryberrybobarry wrote:

...but then the worst thing happened and say tracks one, three, seven, and nine stayed in one folder and two, five, six, eight, and ten stayed in another folder. I call it the zipper. Is there a way to clean up the files on my hard drive and then re importing the cleaned library.

This can happen if there were slight discrepancies between the tags in the two "versions" of the album. The method you use to list the dupes probably can't show you which of the two they come from so you end up with some files from one album, and some form the other. See my article on Grouping tracks into albums for tips on fixing things up.

Finally, why does itunes allow duplicate files anyways. So frustrating!

iTunes just does what it is told. You tell it to rip and album or import a folder that it has imported before and it will just do it again. If you a import folder that is outside the media folder and iTunes is set up to make local copies then it will, as often as you tell it to. Another common error is to fire up iTunes with an external drive disconnected, connect it and then mistakenly reimport the media folder. iTunes won't recognize that it already knows all these files, it currently thinks they are MIA, so it imports them again. Restart iTunes and you'll find you have multiple entries to the same files. Delete either one and send the file to the trash and you break the remaining entry.

tt2

turingtest2 wrote:

Finally, why does itunes allow duplicate files anyways. So frustrating!

iTunes just does what it is told. You tell it to rip and album or import a folder that it has imported before and it will just do it again. If you a import folder that is outside the media folder and iTunes is set up to make local copies then it will, as often as you tell it to. Another common error is to fire up iTunes with an external drive disconnected, connect it and then mistakenly reimport the media folder. iTunes won't recognize that it already knows all these files, it currently thinks they are MIA, so it imports them again. Restart iTunes and you'll find you have multiple entries to the same files. Delete either one and send the file to the trash and you break the remaining entry.

Indeed, it does what ones tells it, but that doesn't mean it's a smart approach. An application can think beyond just “I do it because the user told me so”; iTunes could very well prevent duplicates to be imported (e.g. using the traditional Mac's alias manager (the one which identifies a file even if it is moved somewhere else)) or, at least, ask (it does, but only in user playlists).

I'm sure it could be improved, but sadly I don't get to edit the code. 😉

Feel free to drop a line to iTunes Feedback.

tt2