iTunes Match Bug: Duplicate Songs

The same thing has been happening on my iPhone 5s. It is odd because when I still had the iPhone 5 running iOS 7, everything worked fine.

Do you conncect your device to a computer to sync with iTunes? That is when I get duplicate tracks. Everything is fine before a sync with iTunes. After syncing, I get duplicates like what you have pictured. Also, I have found some albums where the downloaded copy was deleted and all that remains is the iCloud copy.

The only fix I have found is to:

1. Turn off iTunes Match

2. Delete all music (Settings > General > Usage)

3. Do not connect to iTunes

This really interferes with how I have been managing and syncing my podcasts. My choices now are either: turn off iTunes Match and sync via iTunes; or not use iTunes and have everything download twice, once in the Podcasts app and then again in iTunes.

I'm having this same problem and have never used wifi sync.

I hope that isn't the only fix, I have far too many songs to have to re-download them all again.

Same problem here. Duplicate songs when syncing with itunes. The same happens with photos due to "collections" drawing from photostream and iPhoto.

iTunes 11.1.1 doesn't appear to fix the issue.

Avoiding syncing and only using the cloud now.

Sad news, but thanks for the update.

Same issue. Thanks for the workaround. Subscribing to this thread in case anything else comes up...

I had some mild success (don't know if this fixed the problem permanently) by turning off iTunes Match on my iPhone and turning it back on again. The problem reappeared after syncing over WiFi after updating to Mavericks. It might be a problem with the phone thinking it's currently being synced with a different iTunes library.

Same problem here. I found short lived success with the steps below.

1. Turned off iTunes Match

2. Connect to iTunes, remove all songs, verify

3. Re-sync all songs (4,500+) via iTunes

4. Enable iTunes Match (ignore "this will replace music on your device")

5. Download remaining songs (230) that were deleted for some reason when turning on iTunes Match

This worked for me for an entire 2 days, my music was all back on my device locally and I had no cloud icons. Life was good, and then the problem came back. Honestly, I don't have the patience to download 4k songs via the cloud, it's not a reasonable option when a perfectly good cable gets the job done in under 30 minutes.

This problem is infuriating! I had an iPhone 4 and an older MacBook that I never updated to Snow Leopard. I recently purchased an iPhone 5S and could not use it with my old MacBook. I had 5000+ songs on my old computer so I moved the hardcopies over to my girlfriend's MacBook Pro. I also had around 500 purchased songs that I downloaded straight to my iPhone 5S in the days before I switched all my hardcopies over to the MacBook Pro. Then I added all of that music to my iPhone.

Obviously - all of my duplicate problems are with the music that I have bought directly from iTunes. But what is most frustrating is that there is seemingly no rhyme or reason to the duplications. The real confusion starts when I look at the "On This iPhone" tab in iTunes: sometimes in that window it will show duplicates that DO NOT APPEAR as duplicates on my iPhone. ***? Sometimes the inverse it true: the songs are duplicated according to what is "On This iPhone" - but they're actually duplicated on the iPhone. And of course, some songs say they're duplicated are duplicated - and some songs are just not duplicated. Seriously, ***?

I read on one message board to "unclick" the "Show iTunes in the Cloud purchases" under Preferences, then click "ok" then "re-click" the box and click "ok." This worked to take away most of the duplicates. When I noticed that some were still there with the iCloud logo, I tried tinkering with the tabs and all my iTunes purchases either were cleared from my iPhone or were duplicated, putting me back to square one.

For whatever reason, iTunes on my computer is smart enough to not show duplicates, but my phone is not. And then apparently, I cannot control what I delete off of my Phone with the 5S. I unsynced my music and it would not let me delete like half of my downloaded songs off of my phone. Of course, if I manually delete them from the phone, they go away - but I'm sure once I plug my phone back into my computer they will return.

Infuriating.

Yeah! This is been causing problems for me on iphone 5 with ios 7.0.3. Apple TV v2 and iPod Touch 4G with iOS 6 are fine. I was working with Apple technical support for a while and the last email they sent they wanted me to delete my entire library from iTunes Match and reupload it. That's not going to happen concidering it took like 3 days of continuous uploading to get the library into iTunes Match. Besides, I think the library in iTunes Match is fine concidering everything works as it's suppossed to on my apple tv and ipod touch. This seems to be only a problem introduced in iOS 7 at some point.

I very much hope Apple is aware of this and gets it sorted out soon. If iTunes Match was this buggy when I originally purchased it I would never have renewed my subscription. I'm tired of trouble shooting this.

Had the same problem with my iPhone 5c.

It happened when I synced it with iTunes after I turned on iTunes Match on my iPhone

This solved it for me:

1. Turn off iTunes Match and "Show All Music" on your iPhone (Without the iPhone being connect to iTunes)

2. Connect iPhone to iTunes using USB

3. Sync your iPhone* (Make sure that under the Music tab in iTunes it doesn't say "iTunes Match is on". If so, disconnect phone again, make sure iTunes Match is really off on your iPhone and try again.)

4. Disconnect the iPhone from iTunes

5. Turn on iTunes Match on your Phone

6. Go into the Music app and let it load

7. When it's done loading turn on Show All Music

* I used to sync a playlist which contained all the songs I wanted on my iPhone but this is no longer possible in combination with iTunes Match. Your iPhone will delete the songs after you turn on iTunes Match on your phone and get the "This will replace all music on your device" message.

If you sync the songs by selecting Artists, Genres or Albums under the "Music" tab in iTunes, the "This will replace all music on your device" can be ignored. The synced songs will reamain on the iPhone despite the message saying they won't.

Another problem I've been having is updating information in iTunes such as album name and artwork are not reflected on the phone. I have to toggle iTunes Match off/on on the phone for these changes to get updated on the phone. Then some tracks that were already downloaded need to be re downloaded. And I've been seeing a lot of download icon weirdness like when downloading a song on the phone through iTunes Match the download icon randomly appears for other artist/album/songs already on the phone.

Just wondering if you've seen these types of issues also?

I'll try the method you mention to see if it takes care of all these issues.

Well, I tried the steps mentioned by sheepscrecht. I also installed ios 7.0.4 which I think became available today. I'm still having issues with itunes match in ios 7.0.4.

Issues I'm seeing...

---Updates in itunes such as album name and artwork not reflected on phone.

---Wierd icloud download icon stuff when downloading an album. For instance, I check other artists I'm not downloading and I see the download icons all over the place updating at the same time over and over again.

---Having to redownload songs already on the phone after toggling itunes match off/on on phone.

---Incorrect information such as an album lists 39 songs when there are only 37 songs. It's correct in itunes.

---Duplicate songs. Usually I can get rid of these by attempting to play the album, the music app skips them all then adds the download cloud icon or a red circle with the square in the middle. Then toggling itunes match off/on. But they seem to come back randomly.

I see none of this on my ipod touch running ios 6. Apple tv lately has not been updating album name and artwork if changed.

If apple expects people to invest in itunes match they really need to fix all this and get it working as good as it was prior to ios 7. I know I'm not trouble shooting this anymore. Spent too much time on it already.