Mysterious duplicate, triplicate and quadruplicate songs in iTunes 12.9.2.5

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Mysterious duplicate, triplicate and quadruplicate songs in iTunes 12.9.2.5

All the threads regarding this problem that I've found refer to older versions of iTunes and the menu items in the instructions don't match those I find in this current version.

So, I keep find multiple copies of songs and if I painstakingly go through them and delete all but one copy and then copy selected songs to a FAT32 formatted thumb drive, there will be multiple copies of most of the songs on that drive when I plug it into the USB port in my car. They all play very nicely, but I don't want to listen to each song multiple times before moving on the next song.

It's maddening. Help!

iMac with Retina 5K display, macOS 10.14

Posted on Mar 10, 2019 7:59 PM

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Answer 1

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turingtest2

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274,430 points

Mar 12, 2019 8:13 AM in response to Bin Lover

Duplicates happen. I was searching for this article earlier today Find and remove duplicate items in your iTunes library (archive copy) which Apple have removed for reasons that escape me. I have a Windows script for cleaning duplicates so I'm familiar with the task of identifying and cleaning them.

iTunes may create duplicates if the same content is repeatedly added from outside the media folder when it is set to make copies of anything that is added to the library, or is added from an external drive that hosts the media folder that was offline when iTunes was launched, or is re-ripped or converted to different formats.

Quite why an apparently deduplicated playlist should result in duplicates when copied to a folder is a mystery.

tt2

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Answer 2

Bin Lover Author

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Mar 11, 2019 11:16 AM in response to turingtest2

To answer your questions:

Yes, I deleted the entire contents of the thumb drive with Disk Utility, erasing/formatting as FAT32.
I just dragged all the songs I wanted from iTunes onto the thumb drive. No folders
I wonder if the songs that were supposedly "erased" are still visible/playable. If that's the case though, I would expect there only to be two copies of each song instead of as many as four.

Thanks for your help.

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Answer 3

turingtest2

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274,430 points

Mar 11, 2019 6:25 AM in response to Bin Lover

Are you deleting the existing copies of songs on the thumb drive before you are the new ones? Are you adding everything into one flat folder or are there multiple folders which would make it harder to notice duplicates? Could you have copied over any playlist files at some point?

tt2

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Answer 4

turingtest2

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274,430 points

Mar 11, 2019 4:04 PM in response to Bin Lover

If you use the option in iTunes File > Library > Show Duplicate Items do you see duplicates listed there? A band might release several versions of the same song, or it could appear on a compilation album. You might want to make a playlist that only contains unique tracks and copy that to your thumb drive.

tt2

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Answer 5

turingtest2

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274,430 points

Mar 12, 2019 5:22 AM in response to Bin Lover

So contrary to your original post it seems that you haven't deduplicated your library. After using the show duplicates menu option click the Same Album filter so that you see the duplicates with the same album and track details. Keep one of each set of duplicates. If these are multiple entries to the same file on disk then don't send to the trash. Or see Dupin or Dupin Lite 2 at Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes for possible tools to deduplicate your library.

tt2

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Answer 6

Bin Lover Author

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Mar 12, 2019 6:25 AM in response to turingtest2

Actually, I checked the playlist I use for the car before copying the songs onto the thumb drive and there were no duplicates. They only appeared after the copying was completed. Now I've seen as many as six copies of a song. One common thing is that the different copies of a song will have different bit rates and formats. For instance, a common occurrence is one copy is and AAC at a lower bit rate than an Apple Lossless copy of the same song. I just bought Dupin Lite 2 and will try it later today. Meanwhile, I'd still like to know what you think of the situation I just described. Thanks again for your help.

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Answer 7

Bin Lover Author

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10 points

Mar 15, 2019 2:55 AM in response to turingtest2

I got Dupin Lite 2 from the App Store and put it to work. Voila! It did a perfect job of ridding iTunes of all the duplicates. Fantastic! After months of suffering with many unwanted copies it now feels like my app has been cured of cancer. Thanks so much for your help. I'm very grateful.

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