Catalina Music Duplicate Local/Cloud Songs

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Level 5

7,253 points

Catalina Music Duplicate Local/Cloud Songs

Hi everybody. So this is not a new problem and I have been having this issue since the iTunes days pretty much ever since I turned on iCloud music library. I see the songs that I have on my hard drive with the cloud with an 'x' symbol next to it and I see the same song from the cloud with the cloud download icon next to it. This is true for all of the songs I have on my hard drive. How can I hide the cloud songs without turning of synching of the library since I want to be able to continue to use Apple Music? I was chatting with Apple support for 2 hours yesterday. The last thing I was asked to do was to create a new (admin) user account and log in to iTunes and see if I see duplicate songs. I tried that and I did not see any duplicate songs, which I could have predicted since I did not add my local songs to the library. Apple says they are working on the problem but I was just curious if there may be an easy fix that I am and Apple is missing?

MacBook 12''

macOS Catalina 10.15.4

MacBook

Posted on Apr 25, 2020 7:19 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

turingtest2

Level 10

274,162 points

Apr 26, 2020 8:05 AM in response to apfelkopf

Yes, you're showing a local copy that likely has the status removed or similar, and a cloud copy waiting to download. Try to use add to library to get the iCloud Music Library to accept your local copy, then it should stop showing the duplicate to download from the cloud. If it works for one track is should work for the rest.

tt2

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Answer 2

turingtest2

Level 10

274,162 points

Apr 26, 2020 5:00 AM in response to apfelkopf

It would help if you showed the Cloud Status column so the reason for the songs with the x cloud could be seen, but try right-clicking on one of those tracks and seeing if you can use Add to Library. If that works you may find that closing and reopening Music causes the second cloud copy to disappear. If that works you can sort on the cloud status column, select a group of tracks, and repeat.

tt2

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Answer 3

apfelkopf Author

Level 5

7,253 points

Apr 28, 2020 10:06 AM in response to turingtest2

That worked. I clicked 'Add to library' on a song that's on my hard drive, the cloud changed to an empty cloud with dotted lines and then after a minute or so the cloud and duplicate song disappeared. Question: is there an easier way to do this besides highlighting the songs and adding them to the library? I have over 10k songs so this will take me a while to go through...

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Answer 4

turingtest2

Level 10

274,162 points

Apr 28, 2020 11:30 AM in response to apfelkopf

Sort on cloud status. Select first track with the issue, shift-click last track to select the range, right-click on the selection and use Add to Library. Allow the tracks to be added and the duplicates to be eliminated.

tt2

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