Duplicate artists showing in My Music - Artist View

Question

Duplicate artists showing in My Music - Artist View

As of this week, for no apparent reason, since I have added any new tracks/music videos to my iTunes library, each time I do (with the exception of two tracks), each has been created as a duplicate artist (see example of Troye Sivan in image - Artist View on left hand column shows two Troye Sivan artists).

I added a music video (I already have two in the Troye Sivan artist library) and it created a new duplicate artist.

I have tried selecting all three tracks (in Song View) and editing them as multiple items so they are all identical but this doesn't work (as it normally would). Actually I tried this with a recent Duran Duran track and not only did this not work but it took several other tracks from albums and moved them into the duplicate artist library!

I added a Queen track but this worked fine (and I added it in exactly the same way as the other new tracks).

I've looked manually in my folders within the Mac iTunes library and they are all in a single folder in the correct album sub folders. When looking in My Music, Album View, they all appear together - it is only in Artist View.

Is anyone else aware of this issue? Does anyone have any solution? Is this caused by a recent update (either iTunes or IOS) that I am not aware of?

Thanks

iMac, OS X El Capitan (10.11)

Posted on Dec 29, 2015 8:44 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

graphicballboy Author

Level 1

4 points

Dec 31, 2015 8:13 AM in response to graphicballboy

OK so after almost pulling my hair out, I have found a workaround to this glitch. It seems to work on every duplicate artist that has been created this week in my iTunes library so I'm confident this works:

Open My Music in Song View (top right drop down menu).
Sort the columns by Artist (alphabetically) by clicking on Artist at top of column.
Then click on Artist View
Select to a song in the duplicated artist.
Then click on Song View (top right drop down menu)
The track you selected should be highlighted. Then select ALL those with the same artist name (above and below the highlighted track) - this should include your tracks in the duplicated artist
Then Get Info on all selected items and edit as multiple items.
Change the Artist name by adding a space and X
Change the Album Artist name by calling it the same as Artist name (ie. With a space and X at the end)
Click OK
All should appear in a new single consolidated artist (with space and X at the end of the name).
Then click on Artist View (top right drop down menu)
Go to newly named artist and all albums/tracks should be in one place
Select ALL tracks
Then Get Info on all selected items and edit as multiple items.
Change the Artist name back by removing the previously added space and X
Change the Album Artist name back by calling it the same as Artist name (ie. removing the previously added space and X)
Click OK
The Artist still appears to be named with the space and X included, but if you quit iTunes and reopen this will change to the correct artist name.

A bit of a long process but for OCD nerds like me who like to keep their library in order, it works. Let’s hope whatever has caused this in iTunes is fixed in a new update as it's really annoying.😠

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Answer 2

jmwcook

Level 1

0 points

Jan 11, 2016 3:17 PM in response to graphicballboy

You are a god among men. Thank you. I've been trying to figure this out for months.

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Answer 3

Jan 12, 2016 2:55 AM in response to jmwcook

Glad it worked, although I recently added a track which again created a duplicate artist. I did the above and it moved half of the albums in the original artist into the duplicate artist and it took me EIGHT attempts (constantly logging in and out) before they all finally ended up in a single artist and the duplicate was removed! Why this has suddenly started with my iTunes, I have no idea!!

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Answer 4

Jan 12, 2016 6:09 AM in response to graphicballboy

The same thing is happening to me after the last update (12.3.2.35). I've seen that the changes in the folder are right and only iTunes creates duplicates in the artist view. The way i've found is:

- copy the folder of the entire album out of the Music folder

- delete the album in iTunes

- re-import the files to iTunes

BUT this is a workaround... I think this is a iTunes BUG. Every time i edit something this things happened. Before the update it worked without problems!

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Answer 5

Jan 12, 2016 6:37 AM in response to MudTheMod

Thanks Mud - I'll try your folder method next time it happens and see if this works, as it will be quicker. Let's hope this bug is fixed soon!

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Answer 6

Feb 26, 2016 10:47 PM in response to MudTheMod

Good idea, however any playlist that has songs from what you delete from the library will lost those songs from the playlist. You will have to manually add the songs again to any playlist they are on.

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Answer 7

Feb 26, 2016 10:59 PM in response to graphicballboy

Having the same issue and it is getting worse and worse. The majority of imports I am doin are creating a new artist. Sometime multiple times. When I add a music video seems to be the worst as it creates a new artist for each one. Whereas when I import mp3's it is consolidated into the 'new' artist and 'old/existing' artist.

Seems this is a database issue. All of the files are imported into the same folder.

Hoping the Apple engineers are experiencing this too and that it is driving them just as crazy as us. Most engineers are OCD, so I am optimistic this bug will get fixed and does not leaded to corrupted libraries or worse.

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Answer 8

jalkazar

Level 1

0 points

Mar 12, 2016 5:07 AM in response to graphicballboy

This is happening to me as well and it is driving me crazy. The solution offered here worked for tracks that are simply tagged as "Artist X" and "Album Artist X" but when there's an album artist on what is more close to a compilation this won't solve the problem since I have to retag every artist tag afterwards.

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Answer 9

Apr 14, 2016 5:38 AM in response to graphicballboy

I'm currently having the same issue and I think I figured out one(!) thing that's causing it in my case: Whenever I add new music to the library while iTunes is matching my music with the cloud, the new artist can be found twice. However, sometimes it happens even though I make sure iTunes is not matching at the moment.

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Answer 10

May 12, 2016 2:36 AM in response to graphicballboy

HOW IN THE SAM **** DID YOU FIGURE THAT OUT. AND THEN WENT OUT OF YOUR WAY TO TYPE ALL THAT OUT. THANK YOU KIND SOUL.

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Answer 11

Jun 5, 2016 11:17 PM in response to graphicballboy

The solution from OP is working perfectly for me, excellent work!

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Answer 12

Jun 18, 2016 5:08 AM in response to graphicballboy

This had been bugging me for months. Thank you!!!

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Answer 13

Tenesan

Level 1

4 points

Sep 9, 2016 5:29 AM in response to MudTheMod

This approach seems to work more often that the OP's and without having to restart iTunes.

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Answer 14

Arcody

Level 1

19 points

Sep 30, 2016 4:26 PM in response to graphicballboy

This worked for me also. The only difference was that I had to choose ALL of the songs from this artist, and apply the "x" to everything, otherwise I got mixed results.

I also did not have to go back out into the Artist tab after changing to "Artist X" in the songs tab. I remained in the songs tab. When the artist changes to "artist X", and all of the songs associated with that artist change, they remain highlighted. I just re-right-clicked on all the changed, highlighted songs, and removed the "x" en masse, and saved again. All the troublesome albums went into one folder where they should have been in the first place.

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