Duplicate Songs in Windows 7 through iTunes

I've copied my post over from the other thread you wrote in, probably easier to keep things in your own thread...

Here is my current boilerplate post for duplicates in iTunes for Windows:

iTunes may create duplicates if the same content is repeatedly added from outside the media folder when it is set to make copies of anything that is added to the library, or is added from an external drive that hosts the media folder that was offline when iTunes was launched.

Apple's official advice on duplicates is here: Find and remove duplicate items in your iTunes library. It is a manual process and the article fails to explain some of the potential pitfalls such as lost ratings and playlist membership, or that sometimes the same file can be represented by multiple entries in the library and that deleting one and recycling the file will break any others.

Start in the Songs view. Use View > Show Duplicate Items (pre iTunes 12.4) or File > Library > Show Duplicate Items (post 12.4) and then click Same Album to display exact duplicates as this is normally a more useful selection. You need to manually select all but one of each group to remove. Sorting the list by Date Added may make it easier to select the appropriate tracks, however this works best when performed immediately after the dupes have been created. If you have multiple entries in iTunes connected to the same file on the hard drive then don't send to the recycle bin.

Use my DeDuper script (Windows only) if you're not sure, don't want to do it by hand, or want to preserve ratings, play counts and playlist membership. See this thread for background on the script, this post for detailed instructions, and please take note of the warning to backup your library before deduping.

(If you don't see the menu bar press ALT to show it temporarily or CTRL+B to keep it displayed.)

The most recent version of the script can tidy dead links as long as there is at least one live duplicate to merge stats and playlist membership to, and should cope sensibly when the same file has been added via multiple paths.

The first link in the highlighted section takes you to the genesis of the deduper script where I cover the potential pitfalls when deduping. Your case 1 is what I call logical duplicates, and case 2 what I call physical. My script analyzes the library to determine which kinds of duplicates you have and in each case takes the appropriate steps to delete the unwanted entries while retaining one physical copy of the file and preserving information such as ratings, play counts and playlist membership that might be lost if you simply selected one of the files to remove and kept the other.

The second link should give you an idea of how the script works. After deduping your album folders should each contain only one copy of each track. This will normally be the one without the trailing 2 or 3, but you can turn Keep organized off, and then back on again, to force iTunes to tidy up the file names if required.

I'm not quite sure what your starting position was, but you mentioned having content in three folders. You might care to review my Make a split library portable tip which covers some issues with library organization.

Reimporting the library from your iPod is possible, but wouldn't be the way I would go. See Recover your iTunes library from your iPod or iOS device for details.

tt2

Hi,

You're describing what I call logical duplicates, two or more entries in the library connected to the same physical file. The Windows file system is case insensitive so it is possible to get two differently cased versions of a song linked together. If you're letting iTunes manage file names it won't necessarily update the file path after a case only correction to the metadata.

The DeDuper script mentioned above is capable of cleaning up logical duplicates, retaining one entry in the database, merging ratings, play counts, and playlist membership. Test out on the duplicates of a single album to start with to see that it works as you need. Make sure you have a full backup of the library before you start.

tt2

Hopefully, you can help me too.

I've got a huge song collection. (~50k songs atm)

I finally put everything back on my pc from multiple locations, Old drives, cds etc.
I know I have duplicates, but I also have live versions, mashups, studio masters, etc.

Originally I was using MusicBee, and everything was fine.

Then I switched from Droid to iPhone.
I want music on my iPhone.

Install iTunes.

Things go downhill.

iTunes duplicates tons of songs.

iTunes strips out a ton of data that MusicBee and I had painfully added. (correct song names, albums, lyrics, genre, album art, lyrics)

I went from near perfect info back to a.mp3 with everything blank or showing unknown.

I went into the Apple store where the Genius clicked a few things, and then uninstalled all of Apple/iTunes on my system, and reinstalled it.

In the process he added an extra Automatically Add to iTunes folder that of course, didn't work.

So I have a ton of duplicates, missing files pointing to the bogus AutoAdd folder-once I cut everything out of there and pasted it into the right AutoAdd folder, and songs I know I have that just don't show up anywhere in iTunes.

After much gnashing of teeth, I get a suggestion to try MediaMonkey.

Now I have things in triplicate. Yay.

More research, and I find beaTunes.

After some back and forth with the developer, I have it up and running. I manage to get my music down from a high of over 68k tracks, down to 56k tracks.

All the missing files seem to be gone.

Then I start on my duplicates.

Great Googly Moogly.

I have songs showing up twice as duplicates.

Fine.

Except when I check the file location, both have the same file location, same everything, including file name.

When I check in Explorer, I see one copy of the song.

I'm pretty sure iTunes is haunted at this point.

Is there a safe way to get rid of duplicates that are the EXACT same file, showing up 2x in iTunes, but only once in the file system?

Just to make things extra fun if the above is too easy?

I also have files showing up as duplicates, same file location, but one is SONG A, another is song a.

Same song again, but the case is different in iTunes, but shows up as one file in explorer.

tldr; Halp! my iTunes is possessed!

(I'm seriously ready to start chanting "The spirit of Jobs compels you!" at iTunes.)

Glad it helped. 🙂

tt2