How to get rid of duplicate songs in iTunes
If you have moved computers, added an iPod, used a USB flash drive, had music stored on an external drive or used another solution to handle your growing or portable music collection, you have had duplicate songs in iTunes. You also know that once you get enough music on your computer, getting rid of these duplicates becomes quite the chore.
There really is no easy and safe solution for getting rid of duplicates in iTunes, yet. Part of the issue is that so many songs have the same name, or a band might put the same song on different albums. It makes it hard to create a universal method of handling the duplicates.
There are a few programs out there that will bulk delete your duplicates in iTunes. Personally, I recommend avoiding these as it is too easy to accidentally delete songs you like and want to keep. If you are willing to risk it, these programs are:
* Corral All Dupes (Doug’s AppleScripts) for Mac
* iTunes Dupes Barrier (Hyperbolic Software) for Mac
* iTunes VBScript Dupe Killer (Josh G.) for Windows
To get rid of your duplicates the old fashioned way, you use iTunes itself. Open the program. In the finder toolbar under the View menu, choose “Show All Duplicates”. Then you simply go through and delete the duplicate songs one by one, or by holding down the +CMD key while you select more than one individual song for delete.
Be careful! Take that extra minute to make sure you are deleting the right version of the song and keeping the right version. When you do delete, choose the “Empty Files to Trash” option. This means that the songs won’t come back to haunt you later. And iTunes programmers, if you are listening – would it be possible to prevent the duplicate files being created in the first place? I have yet to find that solution.
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