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Song Count Different in iTunes Library and iPod

I am perplexed now. iTunes says I have 6643 songs in the library, and it says it is fully synched with my iPod. Yet the iPod thinks it has only 6603 songs on it. I have gone carefully through the library, and every song thinks it is downloaded. When I mount the iPod, and highlight it in the Source column, the library also reports that the iPod has only 6603 songs on it, so it agrees with the iPod. So what are the 40 songs that the library has that won't download onto the iPod?

Thinkpad X30, Windows XP Pro

Posted on Sep 1, 2006 1:11 PM

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2 replies

Sep 1, 2006 3:17 PM in response to John Gentry

Solution found. I find this amazing, but the iTunes library and the iPod treat duplicates in different ways. In iTunes, if one accidentally ends up with a duplicate song (for example by ripping the same CD twice, not realizing it was ripped before) the iTunes library shows the song twice (and the underlying mp3 files exists twice in the store). And the number of songs showing in the library includes both copies of the song, the original and the duplicate. If you then synch up the iPod, however, iTunes only loads one copy of the song to the iPod. So in my case it transpired that there were 40 duplicates on my computer, none of which downloaded to the iPod, and that is why the song count was higher in the iTunes library, and why the volume of music in the library showed as 240 MB more than what was in the iPod. Very strange design that iTunes knows enough not to download duplicates, but still shows them in the library. Solution is to go to Edit / Show Duplicates in the iTunes library, but be careful as there will be many false positives.

Song Count Different in iTunes Library and iPod

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