Purposely Make Two Different Albums of the Same Songs

Hi Lawrence,

That 2015 post of mine that you linked no longer works. iTunes/Music has logic that prevents adding a duplicate.

Also, since the album name is embedded in the file (for most formats), the same file can't point to two albums. So, you do need two copies of each file, each with its own metadata.

One way to do it: Find the track, and use File > Convert to make a second copy. Right-click the new copy, Get Info, and edit in the new album name, such "Rubber Soul UK." You can do this for multiple files at once, but I suggest you try a few single tracks to see if it is working as you wish.

As long as neither Apple Music or iTunes Match are involved then you can copy the tracks you want to duplicate into the Automatically Add to iTunes folder in your media folder. The new copies will arrive at the top of a list of songs sorted by date added descending. You can select them and change the metadata as you wish leaving the original album unchanged.

tt2

Do you have either Apple Music or iTunes Match? Both services will want to eliminate duplicates from your iCloud Music Library, although they shouldn't actually prevent you creating them locally. Can you not simply make a playlist with the alternative track order?

tt2

That's most odd. I often work in Windows where iTunes happily lets you add a new copy of a file if it is on a unique path different from anything currently known to the library and I was convinced iTunes for Mac and Music behaved the same way. In the past when adding a copy of a file with metadata that matches an existing object in the library the new copy would end up in the same folder with a trailing 1 added to the file name. Testing just now in both Mojave and Catalina what happened is that duplicates were added to the library, but both entries in the database were linked to the same physical file, and the files that I had dropped into the Automatically Add to iTunes folder just vanished into the aether.

So instead of getting the duplicates that I wanted, where I could edit the metadata for one copy while the other stays the same, there is only one file connected to the library, and changing one affects the other. I pretty sure this is buggy behaviour and the software should either import the new file correctly, or not add a new entry to the database. Still, experience has shown that bugs like this don't get fixed in a hurry, if at all, so it is good to know you at least have a workaround.

I also ended up with artwork for a duplicate album with no tracks in it which is another bug, but I suspect that was transient, and at least I know how to merge split albums when needed.

tt2

Weird. Using both the Automatically Add to iTunes folder, and drag and drop (at least in Catalina - haven't rebooted into Mojave to check) I still get dupes in the library but not in Finder.

iTunes (and now Music): Consistently inconsistent, the logic puzzle that keeps on giving.

tt2

Hi Lawrence,

You are welcome. Enjoy the music!

Ed.

See my screenshot. I may not have duplicates in Finder, but I do in both Music (Catalina) and iTunes (Mojave). I would expect better if it were intended as a feature.

tt2