Ernest Banz
Level 1 (0 points)

Q: There are now two copies of every song in my iTunes library. Why and how!

I recently discovered that every song, on every album, in my iTunes library is now doubled. In other words, there are now two number 1's of the same song, two number 2's of the same song, etc., etc. I could go through and delete them individually, but I have something like 200 albums with 10, 15, or more songs on each album. What would cause this sort of thing to happen? Is there a way to quickly delete those extra songs without deleting, and reinstalling the entire album?

Posted on Sep 10, 2015 8:42 AM

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Ernest Banz

Q: There are now two copies of every song in my iTunes library. Why and how!

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  • by alex_h1,

    alex_h1 alex_h1 Sep 11, 2015 10:46 AM in response to Ernest Banz
    Community Specialists
    Sep 11, 2015 10:46 AM in response to Ernest Banz

    Hi Ernest,

    Thanks for visiting Apple Support Communities. 

    It looks like all of the songs in your iTunes library have been duplicated. It can be hard to say why this might happen based on the information given. I know it can be time consuming to delete duplicate content in iTunes, though. 

    If all of the duplicates appeared at the same time, I can suggest a method that may be easier than removing them one by one.  

    Note: It's a good idea to back up your iTunes library before making any major changes. See Back up your iTunes library by copying it to an external drive.

    Next, follow these steps from  Find and remove duplicate items in your iTunes library. 

    Find duplicates

    1. Choose View > Show Exact Duplicate Items.

      Show exact duplicate items
      Matches are based on the song name and artist. If you have multiple versions of the same song (for example, live and studio versions, or versions from different albums) you can hold the Alt or Option key (for Mac OS X) or the Shift key (for Windows) and choose View > Show Exact Duplicate Items. This will show only duplicate songs having the same name, artist, and album.
       
    2. Duplicate items will be sorted next to one another. Review each item to determine which one you'd like to remove from your library. You can compare the track length, date added, genre, play count, size, bit rate, and more to help you determine which item you'd like to keep and which item you'd like to remove.

      Item list

    Once the duplicates are displayed, sort them by Date Added to group all the duplicate copies together: 

    1. Right click on the column heading area (that says Name, Time, Artist, Album, etc.) and click Date Added.
    2. Click the Date Added heading to sort by this field. 
    3. Review your library to find the time that the duplicate songs were added. 
    4. Select and delete the duplicate songs as necessary.

    Best Regards.