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Jake has a large iTunes library, and he wants to know if there’s an easy way to find duplicate songs. Luckily, iTunes has this feature built-in. Over time, it’s easy to build up duplicate MP3s. You’ll forget that you imported the same CD a year ago, then a friend gives you a mix that has several songs you already own, and before you know it, there are dozens of duplicates in your iTunes library.
While this fix will take a few minutes of your time deciding whether the songs iTunes has found actually are duplicates, it’s well worth the time. Before we get to the duplicates, I want to cover one other area.
Getting All of Your Music in One Place
This step is completely optional, but if you’re sorting through duplicates, you might want to make sure all of your music is in your iTunes library. By default, when you import a CD or download music from the iTunes Store, iTunes will add the music to your iTunes library. But if you have received music from some other source and added it to iTunes from a folder on your hard drive, the music might still be in that folder instead of your iTunes folder.
If you want to make sure all of your music is in your iTunes folder, you can consolidate your iTunes library. If you do this, iTunes will look at all of your music and move any music not in your iTunes folder into it. This means that if you want those files to stay where they are, don’t consolidate your library; but if you want them all in one place, this is a good option:
Finding Duplicates in iTunes
- First, open iTunes.
- Next, select Show Duplicates from the File menu (you must be in your music library to do this):
- Once you do this, iTunes will only show you the songs it believes are duplicates. How does it determine this? It looks for songs whose titles and artist names are identical or nearly identical. While this is a very good method, iTunes is assuming you have only one version of a song by each musician (meaning it doesn’t understand how to handle live albums with the same songs as are on studio albums or alternate takes of the same song).
- With your list of duplicates, you can start determining which files to delete. You’re going to want to sort the songs by Name (click on the name column at the top of the search results to sort alphabetically):
- As you can see above, I’ve circled two copies of a tracked called “Song Meat” by the band Subtle. It appears they both come from the same album and are the same length in time, so these two are definitely duplicates. The same could be said of the Sting songs, but not of the Miles Davis renditions of “Someday My Prince Will Come,” since they all come from different albums.
- When you want to delete songs, simply highlight them and press the delete key. If iTunes asks you whether you want to move the songs to the Trash, you should say yes if you want them removed from your hard drive.
Note: When you delete duplicates, they are moved to your trash, and when you empty the trash, the songs are gone for good. You might want to have a backup of your iTunes library before attempting this, just to make sure you don’t delete a copy of a song you want to keep!
Did this tip work for you? Have you found a better way to manage duplicates in your iTunes library? Let others know in the comments.
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{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
I’ve got quite a few dups in my itunes library right now and can find plenty of information as to how to fix that problem; however, I am wondering how they ever get there to begin with? The dups I have in my account seem so random – some are from cd’s I have imported, some are from cd’s or songs I have purchased from the itunes store and sometimes only certain songs from a cd will duplicate and others will not…I don’t understand how/why that happens. I know that I have not downloaded the same cd or bought the songs twice. Can you offer any feedback on that? Oh, and thanks for the very clearly written instructions listed in this post.
I use duplicate finder to remove duplicate songs from my music library, it says that it can easy move or Delete duplicate files and folder.
On Windows there is program called iDeduper to easily delete duplicate songs on iTunes.
http://www.ideduper.com
It is better to just hold down the Option key when entering the file menu. The menu selection will change to Show Exact Duplicates. This way you can really be eliminating exact duplicates.
My question is this. When I use itunes “find duplicate function, do I still have to manually sort through and pic out the duplicate, or can I quickly select all, delete all.
I’m afraid of throwing away both copies of the duplicated music.
jf
jay,
Be sure to hold down the Option key to Show Exact Duplicates and Command click to pick every other one showing. That way you don’t get rid of both. The key is holding the Option key when you enter the File menu. That way you don’t get a lot of files iTunes selects as possible duplicates.
It’s so frustrating to manually select the songs you don’t want to delete. Personally I use this: http://imdeduper.vistanita.com
Thanks for the post, itunes also has an option to “Show Exact Duplicates” meaning you don’t have to download anything or pay for anything to properly delete you duplicates. Check out how here: http://www.dagaza.com/2010/03/delete-duplicates-in-itunes/
Thank you very much. I had probably 5 of ever song in my friends library after adding my music to his computer. This made it very easy to fix. Thanks again.
You were very helpful. Thanks.
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