find all cover versions of songs

Is there a way to find all the cover songs in my library.? I have songs with many versions by the same artist due to live albums. I need to find songs with the same name but a different artist.

Windows, Windows 6

Posted on Mar 28, 2023 5:16 PM

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5 replies

Mar 29, 2023 2:27 AM in response to imwalrus38

The method I use is to look in the Songs View and arrange the songs alphabetically, by title.


  • make sure that the Sidebar is shown. Use CTRL+S to turn it on (or use View/Show Sidebar)
  • under the Library (1.) heading in the Sidebar, select the Songs view (2.). This will display all the songs in your Library




  • notice the tick (check mark) in the column to the left of the name (song title)
  • click on the name header, to sort by the name column, alphabetically by song title. If the list is in reverse order (Z-A), simply tap the name header again to put it into A-Z order. Look at the screenshot below to see that the tick is in the name header and the titles are in alphabetical order



  • you simply have to go through the list to spot songs with the same or very similar title. Notice that I have two copies of Abele Dance

Mar 30, 2023 8:26 AM in response to imwalrus38

Walrus,

If you are handy with Excel, you can take the sorted results of the fiend's method and past them into a spreadsheet. Use the "UNIQUE" function with "exactly once" set to FALSE to narrow down to the ones that occur multiple times.


You will still have to manually deal with false positives (e.g., the title matches but it is not actually a cover) and false negatives (it really is a cover but under a different title, different language, etc.). Also you will have to use your own judgment about what exactly constitutes a cover. There have been court cases about that.

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find all cover versions of songs

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