Q: how to delete duplicated songs all at one time?

I did your suggestions in reverse order.

Anti-virus is Panda, disabled, no change.

Checked permissions, they were already full, applied to "children", took a while, tried again, no change.

Then I added the line of code... and while I had to verify every change one by one, it went through the entire library with no errors.

Having to hit "enter" for each one was still a whole lot better than manually selecting several hundred files, so I consider this a win.

Thank again. 

People like you, who spend their free time helping strangers on the internet is what gives me hope for the human race!

You're welcome.

I'm glad you got there in the end, though I would love to know what was tripping things up.

tt2

Basically, what happened was some iTunes updates kept erasing my playlists and some songs got copied over to my C:\ drive by iTunes.  I eventually got so frustrated that I allowed iTunes to "consolidate" in an attempt to deal with my library referencing songs in 3 different locations (and probably all physically duplicated in each of those locations).  I really care less about albums and the album metadata, I prefer to organize by artist and song.  Each of my songs should have the proper Artist and Song metadata - I've done this manually over the years to deal with iPod sort issues.

When iTunes did this, it renamed my files to "[track number] - [song]" in the default C:\ drive location.

I was able to find a script to rename my files back to how I like them "[artist] - [song title]" in my D:\Users\Michael\Music folder.

After I solve this, I want to try your "SyncStats" tool...I have a iPod that I haven't plugged in for a while I'd like to sync data from.  Maybe it would be easier to rescue song and metadata in full from my iPod?  Although that would require renaming all of the files again once they're pulled off.

The standard layout that iTunes uses for music is:

<Media Folder>\Music\<Album Artist>\<Album>\[[<D>-]## ]<Title>.<Ext>

It doesn't cope well if you move files around manually. Are you saying all of your tracks are now in the layout?:

<Media Folder>\<Artist> - <Title>.<Ext>

If so then the script ought to be effective as that is one of the variations that has been programmed into it.

Each track in an iTunes library and on a device has a unique TrackID. iTunes normally uses these to sync ratings and playcounts. The SyncStats script uses the track properties to provide an alternate key to each each track when the TrackIDs don't match because the library has been reconstructed.

If you have to go back to the device for all of the content see Recover your iTunes library from your iPod or iOS device.

If you end up restoring to a standard iTunes layout it should be possible to make a simple tweak to my script ConsolidateByMoving to enforce your desired structure in a way that keeps iTunes happy.

tt2

Correct.  Most of the broken links are in the consolidated iTunes format you described.  Trying to match those with my preferred format that I've resurrected  is proving difficult.  My iPod is only 4GB so not all of my songs are on it but my preferred ones are.

The reason I've always done this is really just So my iPod is easier for me to scroll through. Also, digital media made the concept of albums dead to me.

/Rant

A similar habit of mine is IIl usually put secondary artists in the song title (i.e. Jay-Z - Run This Town [feat. Rihanna and Kanye West].mp3.  I've never liked having one artist for only one song when it's a collaboration or rename Ozzy Osborne to Black Sabbath, Gwen Steffani to No Doubt  to keep them all together. Shoot me, I guess.  Nevertheless, iTunes over the last 12+ years has slowly been corrupting my way of doing things and is winning this quasi war of attrition with me.  The benefit is I updated my entire libraries metadata as I added music to meet these needs so I've never had to do a massive metadata fix for artists or song titles (although, I guess now days it's easy with some of the programs out there).

/endrant

Any best strategies on how I could handle this broken links issue with a merge to my .mp3's in the format I have or is it lost?

I'm familiar with the issue of secondary artists, particularly on the iPod classic. If fact it is what brought me to this site in the first place. Not finding the answers to hand I set about working them out for myself. My Grouping tracks into albums article is the result of trying to nail it all down so that my library works well in both my computer and my devices.

I'm still not sure why neither FindTracks or DeDuper are proving effective. Perhaps if you can show all of the details for some specific examples it might help. Relevant details are:

• True path

• Path shown in Get Info > File > Location

• Compilation

• Album Artist

• Size

• Artist

• Album

• Disc Number

• Track Number

• Name

Dupes are matched on the last 5 or 6 properties, or the first one in some cases.

tt2

• True path

D:\Users\Michael\Music\Grateful Dead - Tennessee Jed.m4a

• Path shown in Get Info > File > Location

file://localhost/C:/Users/Michael/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music/Grateful Dead/What a Long Strange Trip It's Been_ The/2-04 Tennessee Jed.m4a

• Compilation

Jerry Garcia/Robert Hunter / Jerry Garcia/Robert Hunter

• Album Artist

Grateful Dead/Grateful Dead

• Size

6.8MB/6.8MB

• Artist

Grateful Dead/Grateful Dead

• Album

What A Long Strange Trip It's Been (Disc 2)/What a Long Strange Trip It's Been: The Best of the Grateful Dead

• Disc Number

2 of 2/2 of 2

• Track Number

4 of 8/4 of 8

• Name

Tennessee Jed/Tennessee Jed

Sorry for the delay. When using the FindTracks script are you pointing it at D:\Users\Michael\Music?

tt2

I Am.  It fixed around 300-400 songs

Can you see any pattern to the tracks it won't fix? How many are we talking about?

tt2

I have just under 900 broken songs.

There doesn't seem to be a pattern.  Sometimes the year and track numbers don't match, other than that, not much.

Can the script be run to only care about meta data artist, meta data song, and possibly a second script that also check file name after the last "-" (which would be a song name)?

Could you take a screenshot of a section of the media folder in list view listing say a dozen tracks in the various different naming schemes you have used and mark out which, if any, have been successfully reconnected? I should be able to tweak the rules of the script to find the remainder once I can see what it isn't picking up.

tt2

I seemed to have lost a lot of plays somehow, as well.  Hopefully, I'm able to recover those from my iPod when I get this sorted.  Some of these I may have fixed manually, most that aren't !ed were probably merged by your script.

Sorry I wasn't clear enough, can I see the filenames in Windows/File Explorer please? I'm assuming that mostly I will be able to deduce the metadata from the filenames. I can then create matching dummy entries in a test library and explore why the script isn't detecting the tracks.

tt2