Having duplicate songs on iTunes can be pretty annoying. For one thing, it can eat up all the data storage space on your computer that could be used for stocking up on new music, videos and podcasts. As the amount of media stored on your iTunes increases, you’ll begin to lose track of what you already have, and your library will just end up disorganized. Files will be even harder to find, especially if they aren’t tagged with the proper titles and before you know it, you’ll have duplicate songs on iTunes.
The iTunes platform was created to help audio lovers easily manage their collection of music files in one specific program. What’s great about this particular software is that it makes importing, uploading, or transferring media to other sources pretty easy. But once your library gets messed up, you can end up with the same song twice on a burned cd or a playlist and that’s just not cool.
Not everyone is tech savvy, so trying to clean out iTunes can be a confusing task. If you’re the type of person with thousands and thousands of songs stored in your iTunes, it’ll take you weeks to go through your media files and sort it all out. To save your from the headache, listed below are the fastest and simplest ways to get rid of duplicate songs on iTunes.
Best Way to Get Rid of Duplicate Songs on iTunes: Third Party Clean-Up Apps
Third party companies have made the job of eliminating duplicate songs on iTunes a breeze with clean-up applications exclusively for the program. Within minutes, you can clear out your library of any unwanted files. Most applications, however, come with a price, so if you don’t have the time to manually organize your library and have a little extra cash to spend, downloading a clean-up application would be your best option.
Be careful when you use these third party applications. The software you use to get your iTunes in order can accidently delete files you actually need or want. Once these files are deleted, you may not be able to recover them. Before running the application, make sure that you back-up all your music files so in case anything is erased, you may restore it without encountering any problems.
Best Clean Up App We’ve Found: Rinse
Here’s a free way to not only get rid of the dupes, but also to fix misspellings, and basically just make your whole collection look better, and make it easier to navigate and listen to. It will even automatically fill in all of the artist and track names that have been missing from your collection, so it just looks more complete. It also will add album art, so you can more easily visually flip through your music and find what you want to listen to.
Runner-Up: Change the Settings
Deleting all the songs that have been duplicated is a hassle, but determining which songs those are is even worse. Luckily, there is a setting that will automatically list all the songs and its duplicates. Open your iTunes program and click on File. Scroll down until you see Display Exact Duplicates. After selecting this option, you will be shown a list of all media files that share common song names or titles. From there, all you have to do is sort the list by date; select the older songs by pressing shift on your keyboard to highlight all the songs instead of checking each box one by one then delete select delete to remove the files.
What Causes Duplicate Songs on iTunes?
There are several reasons why you might end up with duplicate songs on iTunes. The most common mistake users make is copying music twice, whether it’s ripping songs from a CD or transferring songs from a friend’s mp3 player to your library. When your library begins to fill with new music, you forget you have a specific song and end up uploading it again. Another reason why songs might double is because of a bug within the program. It’s highly unlikely that this would be the reason, but it does happen.
Preventing Duplication of Songs on iTunes
In order to prevent songs from duplicating on iTunes, make sure you organize your files soon after they’ve been added. This includes renaming and editing artist names and titles of songs and albums. By doing this, you keep your library neat enough for you to be able to look through it without any difficulty, as well as save you the trouble of managing your list of songs in the future. Before transferring or uploading songs onto iTunes, check your playlists to see if you already have the songs on there. A lot of the time, you will.