Duplicate Artists in iTunes - How do I fix this?

Hi Guys,

I've been going through my iTunes library and have noticed a few artists appearing twice, or more than twice, under the Artists view in iTunes (v12 for MacOS).

To give an example, here is the Artist: "Adele" whom I have 2 tracks from the same album. However, she appears twice as an Artist as seen below:

However, within the Album view, it correctly recognises the album as being one and also from the same artist:

Here are the things I've tried to fix this problem:

1. Highlight both tracks so that both are selected > Get Info > delete the Artist name and re-type it - not worked

2. Highlight both tracks so that both are selected > Get Info > set it to something random e.g. "aaaaabbbbccc"> hit OK > then select both again > Get Info > Set it back to "Adele' - Not worked

3. Highlight both tracks so that both are selected > Get Info > confirm that there is no custom 'sorting' added to the tracks and that everything is identical (e.g. album year, compilation, disc no, comments etc' except the track name and track no - not worked

4. Checked countless times to ensure no extra spacing, mis-spelling, or any discrepencies between the tags. I've even ran a trailing space remover script to ensure all tags don't have any spaces as well as running Song Sergeant for Mac to detect any errors - still not worked

5. Checked the folder structure in the iTunes Media Library and everything appears OK - there is only one folder called "Adele" and also only one folder named "25" (album name) and two tracks inside the album's folder. Third-party software also detects as one artist.

6. I've tried going to Preferences>Advanced> unchecking "Keep iTunes media folder organised'", hitting OK and then re-enabling it so that it rescans the library. It still has not worked either.

So everything appears fine from my end

The only thing I can think of is that iTunes is not updating the Artists view/cache as everything else in other views appears correct - it's only the Artist view that appears to 'stick' to some sort of cache. The problem is I don't know how to clear it or force-refresh it.

I don't wish to remove the library then re-set it as I believe this will cause you to lose the "date added" dates for tracks.

Would really appreciate if anyone can suggest anything I could try to solve this as this is getting really irritating, being someone who likes to keep organised.

If nothing is forthcoming, I'll probably submit this as a bug to Apple, although I'd like to exhaust all options before doing so.

Thank you! 🙂