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

My test cases:  Def Leppard kind of worked (5 failed), but it was listing each success twice (see pic). Aerosmith all failed, Bryan Adams failed, Default failed.

Appears to be taking the first letter on the song title and trying to match it with an artist that starts with that letter

The Beatles:

Ran it on the rest of the library, it kept matching the first letter of a name of the song to the first letter of name of another artist

I'm willing to surrender and hope that I can get SyncStats to work.  Unless you're having fun

I take it that is the newer version of the FindTracks script? I've probably got to force it to skip some of the other search patterns that it is using for your library. Hopefully I can look at it again sometime tomorrow. SyncStats is going to need a tweak if you hope to match tracks on the device that might have valid track no. or album data with those in the library that don't (or vice versa).

tt2

How hard would the SyncStats tweak be?

Apologies for not getting back to you sooner. Been busy with Real Life™. Still haven't got around to tweaking FindTracks further as I think that will need more of a hack, but for SyncStats and ImportDevicePlaylists you should be able to go in and edit this line:

    Signature=LCase(.Artist & "\" & .Album & "\" & .DiscNumber & "." & .TrackNumber & " " & .Name)

in a function called Signature and replace it with something like:

    Signature=LCase(.Artist & "\"  & .Name)

to reflect the properties that you still have in your files after you've edited them. Differences in album, disc number and track number will be ignored but as long as a track with matching artist and song name exists it will be treated as a match.

tt2

1.Open the Music library in iTunes.

2. Sort your duplicate list.

3.Delete the duplicates.

All of them? Then there is nothing left! Do they go in the trash, or not? If it was easy nobody would bother asking, and nobody would get in a mess when they get it wrong.

tt2

SyncStats with that tweak worked.

929 were processed of which 874 were updated and 55 not found.

My VB isn't good, is there a way it can print the 55 missings?

I'm away from a computer for a couple of days (posting from an iPad) but some kind of log is a great idea. Might help with troubleshooting the other issue too.

tt2

My PC died and I replaced it with a MacBook.  I lost iTunes but not my music files as most were stored on external drives.  I can import them to a new iTunes library but, want to avoid duplicates.  The trouble is that the file names are in disarray.  For example, sometimes "The Beatles" are just "Beatles" and album names may be Anthology Disc 1 or Disc One.  Some of the titles include a track number, sometimes there is no album name or it's "Unknown Album".  I have about 340GB of music files mostly ripped from CDs, a few purchased, and a few recorded live.  What is the best way to get the library reconstructed with the fewest duplicates or errors?  

See my article on Grouping tracks into albums for some general background on how iTunes organizes content. It is the tags that matter, not the filenames. Unless you have good reason to do otherwise let iTunes manage the file and folder names then as you update the tags the files will be moved and renamed accordingly. See also Make a split library portable. Make your iTunes library in the root of an external drive and move your content inside the iTunes Media folder before adding it to iTunes. Repeatedly importing folders located outside of the media folder is a common way to create duplicates, and they can also be created when the library is split if iTunes is launched when an external drive is offline as iTunes may not correctly recognize content that has already been added to the library. Backup regularly to another drive as you go.

Consistency is a key ingredient for a well ordered library. If your library is organized neatly then it easy enough to make one new album fit in properly, but fixing up a large library will take patience and persistence. The column browser is a useful tool for this. You can step through one artist or album at a time looking for anything that is out of place, e.g. missing artwork or other details, track number in the Name instead of Track #, split or duplicate albums where you expect one, or merged albums when you expect to see two, alternate names for the same artist, etc. and of course any actual duplicate tracks. If you have any older iPods then you'll also want to consider the effects of featured & guest artists in the Artist field, otherwise the Album Artist field can be used to ensure albums group together.

Given you're on a Mac see Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes. He has some useful tools for managing iTunes on OS X.

tt2

I looked at the 9000 duplicate songs in my Itunes folder and found a common thread that I am using to get the duplicates out somewhat quickly. The duplicate filename ends with either a space then 1.mp3 , 2.mp3 , 1.m4a and 2.m4a. I began by using a program called SearchMyFiles to search my Itunes music folder for filenames that ended with each of these file endings using wildcard options. I then selected  the results of the individual searches and moved them out of the Itunes folder into a new folder called duplicate songs on a spare hard drive . Afterwards, I re scanned the Itunes folder for duplicates and found it to be clear. You might also check for duplicate album cover Jpegs and other files using the same methods.

Good luck

BH

I looked at the 9000 duplicate songs in my Itunes folder and found a common thread that I am using to get the duplicates out somewhat quickly. The duplicate filename ends with either a space then 1.mp3 , 2.mp3 , 1.m4a and 2.m4a. I began by using a program called SearchMyFiles to search my Itunes music folder for filenames that ended with each of these file endings using wildcard options. I then selected  the results of the individual searches and moved them out of the Itunes folder into a new folder called duplicate songs on a spare hard drive . Afterwards, I re scanned the Itunes folder for duplicates and found it to be clear. You might also check for duplicate album cover Jpegs and other files using the same methods.

Good luck

BH