Which duplicate song do I remove?

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Level 1

22 points

Which duplicate song do I remove?

I know how to find duplicate songs in iTunes 11. I just don't know which of any pair to remove. The older install or the more recent?

And there are many pairs in the list where there's one song in the Cloud and one on the device. While I do want to have songs _backed up_ remotely, I want them all on my MacBook, too. But when I'm looking for dupes I don't want to see the backups. I know I'm talking like someone from 1998 and that I may be misunderstanding how "cloud content" is supposed to work, but I also know I'm getting songs playing twice in a row, and that never happens with my LPs.

Please help an old man.

MacBook, OS X El Capitan (10.11.4)

Posted on Apr 16, 2016 5:09 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Limnos

Level 10

411,193 points

Apr 19, 2016 2:03 PM in response to Rob Ehle

Are you using iTunes 11?

If one of your duplicates is in iCloud then hide iCloud music.

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Answer 2

Rob Ehle Author

Level 1

22 points

Apr 19, 2016 2:09 PM in response to Limnos

Thanks, Limnos. That helped a lot.

I still have a number of songs with different Date Added dates. If they're otherwise identical, I'm assuming it doesn't matter which I delete. Unless there's something I need to worry about about where the song's file is located. I want to keep things as clean as possible.

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Answer 3

Limnos

Level 10

411,193 points

May 5, 2016 9:24 AM in response to Rob Ehle

Before deleting those I would right click > reveal in Finder and make sure it isn't two references pointing to the same file. If it is then deleting one and deleting the file will result in a broken link for the other reference.

Posts by turingtest2 about different types of duplicates and techniques - https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3555601 and https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3293239?answerId=16042406022#16042406022 (Note: The DeDuper script is for Windows).

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