Q: iTunes artists duplicate
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Sep 30, 2016 12:00 PMby turingtest2,You're not alone.
If iTunes shows multiple instances of an artist or an album then what generally works is to select all related tracks and use Get Info to add say a trailing X to each of the fields that the tracks should have in common:
- For an album; Album, Album Artist, and Artist (if artist is the same for all tracks) *
- For an artist; Album Artist (and Artist unless there are guest/featured artists listed which should not be changed)
Apply the change which merges things together, then remove the excess characters. Occasionally it may help to close and reopen iTunes between the two renaming operations. Part of a compilation should also be set consistently.
* If tracks are to be synced to a non-iOS device there should be a common Artist and/or the album should be set as a Compilation.
Use the songs view and display the fields Album, Sort Album, Album Artist, Sort Album Artist, Artist and Sort Artist side by side so you see whether or not it is appropriate to edit Artist and if sort values could be causing any further problems. See Grouping tracks into albums for more help if required.
One further tip for really stubborn duplicates. At one point I had three lots of Various Artists in the artists view of my iTunes Match library that wouldn't respond to the usual trailing X treatment. What I found worked was to add the trailing X to start with, but then with each group that iTunes wanted to keep separate start typing a value and let iTunes autocomplete from Var... to Various Artists. Picking from the autocomplete lists seemed to work when pasting/editing the whole value didn't.
tt2
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Oct 9, 2016 12:29 PMby turingtest2,I'm familiar with the problem of iTunes showing duplicate artists or albums after adding new content to the library. The steps above should resolve things. If you want to post a screenshot of one of your problem artists I can make specific recommendations for that case.
tt2
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Oct 11, 2016 5:29 AMby daxter94,I'm writing from the phone, then I'll explain, in such artists rihanna me appears seven times, the rihanna albums are not collecting all under the same heading but are divided as if they were different artists. This happens to me with more artists, and not only with rihanna
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Oct 11, 2016 5:54 AMby turingtest2,Here is a worked example with an album, albeit on a somewhat older version of iTunes. http://samsoft.org.uk/iTunes/merge.asp.
With the Rihanna albums use the Songs view and search box so you can gather all of her albums together on the screen at one time. Select all of the tracks and change the Artist and Album Artist to RihannaX. If you have any of her tracks on compilation albums change the artist there to RihannaX too. It may work without, but it can sometimes help at this point to close iTunes and then reopen it. Now change all of the values that you changed back to Rihanna. This should resolve the multiple artist entries in the Artists view.
If it hasn't worked locate the first entry for Rihanna in the Artist view and change those tracks to RihannaX. Then get the next entry for Rihanna, Get Info. and this time start typing Rih... in the artist box. When you can see RihannaX in the list of suggestions stop typing and select the value in the list. Repeat until all have been merged under RihannaX, then close iTunes and reopen. Finally change back to Rihanna.
If it still doesn't work curse Apple's programmers and try again later. You will get it done if you're persistent.
Once you have fixed it in iTunes you can try syncing the device. If that continues to show multiple listings remove the tracks from the device, then add them back again.
tt2
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Oct 11, 2016 9:08 AMby daxter94,I have to do this process every time? itunes does this every time I add a new track from an artist that I already in the library, in fact I will have at least 20 items of various artist. This does not happen when for example "home" use with the iPhone, the library is perfectly ordered them without duplicates artists.
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Oct 11, 2016 9:13 AMby daxter94,another thing, because the artists do not add my photo? the photo will possess only very few such artists only the first rihanna as you see in the screen, but when I use the "at home" function with the iphone all artists have their own pictures ... a disappointment this itunes for windows .. .
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Oct 11, 2016 10:00 AMby turingtest2,I haven't had to do it in ages, but 12.5.1 did break a few artists that were working perfectly before. In fact now that I think about it I still have 3 x Various Artists (down from 18) but I think I've fixed everything else. Tried again and I've got three down to two but I don't really want to have to update nearly 10,000 tracks when there are only 30 that aren't playing ball.
Apple broke artist images in 12.5.1. Hopefully they will fix it again in the next release. Send feedback.
tt2
