Hey,
Just another small complaint about a small apple bug... iTunes is obsessed with dubbling some of its files... and now I have over 3000 different songs, it has made it to something like 4000... Annoying. I have spent an hr getting rid of some dubbles 'by hand' but im getting too bored of doing this, and I would rather waste HD space, than my time. I was wondering if anyone knew of an application that will automatically delete the dubbles. If not does anyone know of a script so that it auto selects Yes when it prompts you: do you want to delete this from your iTunes music folder? because I really hate having to keep moving my mouse all over the place... I love iTunes as much as the next guy, it has amazing feachers, I would never use any of the other current options. But annoying bugs like this makes me think twice about my beloved iTunes folder....

-Knife

I don't know of any apps that do this but I have this AppleScript that does a good job of finding and trashing doubles

http://www.malcolmadams.com/itunes/scripts/scripts07.php?page=4#trashduplicates

EDIT: Bad link fixed

Post edited by: Martini, at: 2004/11/16 12:59

This is not a bug. It's a feature.

Seriously.

Let's say that I have 5 copies of a song from artist X. One is a studio version, the other four are live versions.Each one is unique. Do I want to delete all of them?
No, I don't. I want to keep each one.

Sure, if you buy a ton of "best of ____" cds, you will end up with a ton of dupes, but what are you doing buying THOSE cds :P

In those cases I label my live versions differently.. what knife was talking about is an iTunes bug.. it happened to me on my old ibook.. every so often itunes will duplicate a song. Not automatically give you live versions. we mean going from just having NOFX - Bob to having NOFX - Bob[1], NOFX - Bob[2], NOFX - Bob[3] etc etc etc. That's iTunes 'backing up' songs and making EXACT copies of songs.

I've never experienced this, but my friend uses itunes for PC and has had it duplicate songs as they were transfered to his ipod.

Martini is correct, you label those songs differently than the others in that instance. I have the same. I have many songs that are live and cd recordings. They are labeled as such, one indicating that its live and the other not. However, the duplicates of the exact same song do need to be removed. I downloaded this script. Haven't got a chance to try it out, but I can't wait.

no, i was more going for what Martini was saying, iTunes makes EXACT copies, like I will have for example "Getaway Car" by Audioslave, on the album Audioslave same song, same time, same album same everything. It duplicates it. Its not like having a live version and a normal and a demo and a false start, I even keep exact dubbles of songs when they are on diff albums because I want to keep the full album... I've been using iTunes for quite some time, but I think that this has only happened in iTunes 4.x and higher... But I have yet to try the applescript that Martini sugested it might fix the prob...

-Knife

ok, I just tried out your applescript Martini. Very nice. The only problem is that I don't want to have to select the two possible duplicates. If there was a way for it to just scan through the duplicate list that the new itunes makes and auto delete the ones that are completely the same an d only ask for the ones that are slightly different.

O well, guess I will just live with it for now, wish I knew applescript

Yeah I tried it as well, Its a great idea, but I already know what files I would need to delete, the problem is there are like 800 of them or so... but thanx for the link, I might yet use that application its good for music I download off of wait I mean um... *Wink*

-Knife

This situation reminds me of when someone used my iTunes for the first time and decided to sort all of my MP3's by artist. Still fixing that even tonight. You have my regards!