Duplicate songs

[tobindia]

I don’t know how or when it happened, but many of the songs on my devices are duplicated. It’s been like thus for quite a while (>1 year). It’s never caused any problems, but I’m cleaning up my MBA, and i’d like to eliminate these dupes. Is there an easy way to eliminate them?

Catalina 10.15.7

 

[pm-r]

i’d like to eliminate these dupes. Is there an easy way to eliminate them?

Pretty easy, just head here and follow directions:

Find items and duplicates in Music on Mac

Find items and duplicates in Music on Mac

In Music on Mac, find items in your library that you might have imported more than once.

support.apple.com

PS: it's always a good recommended idea to have a backup of all your data and files first. Just in case... But you should have a current backup anyway...


- Patrick
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[tobindia]

Thanks Patrick but if I read this right, this describes a way to eliminate one song at a time. I have hundreds of duplicates. I am looking for a way to delete them all at one time.

 

[pm-r]

Thanks Patrick but if I read this right, this describes a way to eliminate one song at a time. I have hundreds of duplicates. I am looking for a way to delete them all at one time.

OK tobindia, I did not read through the details as to how it would find or remove duplicates but if you have that many to filter out of your playlist, doing one of the time would sure take quite some time.

So another possibility you could try would be some duplicate finding applications that I have recently been trying out on my hard drive to eliminate a bunch of duplicate files and folders that I have ended up with over the years,

I have only just started using some of them but they have worked fairly well and I think I have removed about 30 gigabytes of duplicated files and folders.

In no particular order, I have been trying out these:
Duplicate Files Fixer
EasyDuplicateFinder
Duplicate Sweeper
Duplicate File Cleaner

I think I have found Duplicate Files Fixer to be one of the easiest, at least for my generalized use, and I am sure if it gives you an option to only search in certain places, which in your case would be your music library folder.

I think I found them by searching through the files at MacUpdate and the App Store

Best Duplicate File Finder & Remover for Windows, Mac & Android

Find and delete duplicate files, photos, MP3's & videos using the best duplicate file finder software and recover precious disk space.

www.duplicatefilesfixer.com

I hope this helps, but don't forget to have a currently saved backup before you try any trimming... Just in case...

Here's a screenshot of Duplicate Files Fixer which is pretty straightforward for what you want to scan for...




- Patrick
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[tobindia]

don't forget to have a currently saved backup

Believe me. I understand the need of a good, current backup!!!

Anyway, jumping ahead a bit, and just for my information, if I were to manually delete an individual song by moving the /Users/<my name>/Music/iTunes file to Trash, would the Music app deal with it correctly? That is, would it just not show the song and not complain about it? What if I were to manually delete all of the songs in an album? Would it just not show that album? (I won’t do it this way, but I’m just seeking to find out how Music works.)

 

[pm-r]

Anyway, jumping ahead a bit, and just for my information, if I were to manually delete an individual song by moving the /Users/<my name>/Music/iTunes file to Trash, would the Music app deal with it correctly? That is, would it just not show the song and not complain about it?

To be quite honest, I don't really know but I would assume so.

What I really don't know is how it would affect any of your iTunes account stuff or maybe even iCloud stuff or how any music is shared or shown or used, assuming you use any of those.

Virtually none of the music I have in my iTunes library came from Apple, or only a few Tunes at most. So in such a case I would have no problem deleting any duplicate music files and I would expect only the music in my iTunes library to show when using iTunes.

Your situation may differ. So, hopefully, some other member can provide you with an accurate answer to your question.

I'm sorry I can't help further.


- Patrick
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[ferrarr]

Anyway, jumping ahead a bit, and just for my information, if I were to manually delete an individual song by moving the /Users/<my name>/Music/iTunes file to Trash, would the Music app deal with it correctly?

Only if you deleted the file from within the Music app. If you delete the file from Finder it will not remove the file from Music. And the app will then ask if you want to locate the missing file.

The files may be different file types like mp3, wav, aiff, etc. If you convert a file to a different type, the app will still retain the original file as well as the converted file. Look for a setting to display file type in your song library.

I use File > Library > Show Duplicate Items to identify duplicate items. Then I compare them, because songs from different albums may be different lengths so I would keep the different length songs. Then I click and hold command down and click any others and delete as needed.

 

[tobindia]

Only if you deleted the file from within the Music app. If you delete the file from Finder it will not remove the file from Music. And the app will then ask if you want to locate the missing file.

Thanks, ferrarr. That's what I needed to know.

I use File > Library > Show Duplicate Items to identify duplicate items. Then I compare them, because songs from different albums may be different lengths so I would keep the different length songs. Then I click and hold command down and click any others and delete as needed.

Thanks for pointing this out. It'll still be a bit tedious for me, but it's better than deleting them one at a time.

My next question is, if I delete the duplicates from my Mac and resync it with my iPhone, will the duplicates be removed from my phone? That is, does the sync only happen in one direction (from the Mac to the iPhone only), or is it bidirectional (from the Mac to the iPhone and from the iPhone to the Mac?

 

[ferrarr]

I believe you would need to delete the songs from the device as well, but I can't confirm that. It's been a while since I did this.

Or you could remove all the music from the device, then sync it back to the device.

 

[tobindia]

For the record, in my test, it appears that a sync is uni-directional only, from the Mac to the iPhone. Since I can't think of anything that I have only on my iPhone or iPad and not on my MBA, that's not an issue for me.

Thanks pm-r and ferrar for your help.