How-to Tips - Find and remove duplicate songs in your iTunes library

After years of use, many iTunes users would find their iTunes music library messed up with songs that show more than once. These duplicate songs would eat a lot of storage and make music enjoying less enjoyable.  Thus, today I would like to share 2 ways to find and remove duplicate songs in iTunes music library, and make a simple comparison between these 2 solutions.

Solution 1 – iTunes

Apple already prepared options within iTunes to help iTunes users find and remove song duplicates. You could follow the below steps to get rid of duplicates.

Find duplicates

1.      Choose View > Show Exact Duplicate Items.

Matches are based on the song name and artist. If you have multiple versions of the same song (for example, live and studio versions, or versions from different albums) you can hold the Alt or Option key (for Mac OS X) or the Shift key (for Windows) and choose View > Show Exact Duplicate Items. This will show only duplicate songs having the same name, artist, and album.

How to clean up iTunes and delete duplicates in iTunes music library

As more and more people use Apple devices, iTunes becomes even more popular and vital for people to store all files, like video, audio, apps, etc. As a comprehensive managing center for all iOS devices, iTunes could also act as audio player to play music and videos. People could download and store music files in iTunes freely. As the music files stored in iTunes increase, iTunes would become messy and get various duplicates of the same music file. Thus, questions like this "How can I easily remove and delete duplicates in itunes without having to manually remove each?" could be frequently seen online everywhere. 

How to remove or delete duplicates in iTunes? It is very easy for people to delete music files in iTunes. However, it is not easy for people to delete duplicates in iTunes manually. In fact, there is no automatic way within iTunes itself that you could delete duplicates in iTunes music library without having to manually remove each. The easiest way to do this with iTunes only is to go to "Edit> Show Duplicate Songs" and then sort by time to delete duplicates in iTunes. This would also require for manual operation. 

So, is there any better way to do this? Is there any wonderful iTunes cleanup app to help clean up iTunes and delete duplicates in iTunes music library with simple and fast operation? Of course yes. There are quite a few wonderful iTunes cleaner programs for you to use while trying to delete duplicates in iTunes music library, including: TuneUp, Song Sergeant, Tunes Cleaner for Mac, etc. 

Well, I would like to take the Tunes Cleaner for Mac as example to show you how to delete duplicates in iTunes music files on Mac OS computers. This iTunes cleaner app is suitable for Mac users to clean up iTunes music library, delete duplicates in iTunes, get album artwork for iTunes music files, etc. Once opened, it would be automatically scan the iTunes music library and list all music files that need to be fixed in specified classes. As the purpose is to delete duplicates in iTunes music library, check all music files under the "Duplicate songs in one list" option and then click "Fix" button to delete duplicates in iTunes music library easily. After fixing, click the "Apply" button and this iTunes cleaner program would automatically apply the fixed results to iTunes music library. Your iTunes music library will no longer be filled with duplicates. 

This iTunes cleanup tool has been considered to be the easiest and most effective one, while other tools like TuneUp and Song Sergeant also provide very convenient operation and powerful functions. With these iTunes cleanup apps, it would be easier to clean up iTunes and delete duplicates in iTunes music library. 

Detailed guide: How to clean up iTunes music library

Clean up iTunes music library with iTunes cleanup tool

“I have downloaded a lot of wonderful music files on my iTunes. Some of the music files have got several duplicates, while some others may have not complete music tags like artist, album, artwork, etc. Now, I would like to re-organize my iTunes music library. How can I clean up iTunes music library, delete duplicates in iTunes and get album artwork for iTunes music files easily? Is there such an iTunes cleaner tool to help me do this?”

For many iTunes users, this problem is in fact very common. iTunes is not only a music player, but also a wonderful choice for users to store music files downloaded from online audio sites, iTunes store, or transferred from other media players. After long term of use, iTunes is not as clean and well organized as it used to be. It might get a lot of duplicates, music files with missed artist, album, artwork, etc. In such condition, it is necessary to clean up iTunes with professional iTunes cleaner tool. 

There are a lot of wonderful iTunes cleanup tool for you to choose online. These iTunes cleanup tools could help you clean up iTunes music files, delete duplicates in iTunes, get album artwork for iTunes music files, etc. Then, how to select the most effective iTunes cleaner program out of all choices, or which iTunes cleanup tool is the best? 

My standard for choosing the best iTunes cleaner program is that it should be easy to use, functional and with user-friendly program interface. Upon these features, I have tested a lot of iTunes cleanup tools and finally found the Tunes Cleaner for Mac fulfills me most. 

The Tunes Cleaner for Mac is indeed a powerful but easy to use iTunes cleanup program. It could clean up iTunes music library easily, delete duplicates in iTunes, get album artwork for iTunes, complete music information including musicians, album, cover, etc. What’s more, the most attractive point of this iTunes cleanup tool is the quite easy to use and user-friendly program interface. It is very easy to use this program to clean up iTunes music library. The simple interface would tell you all things to do in a very simple way. 

Besides the Tunes Cleaner for Mac, I also tried some other wonderful programs to clean up iTunes, including TuneUp and Song Sergeant. The TuneUp could easily fix mislabeled song info, remove duplicate songs, fill in missing album cover art, get concert alerts, music videos, artist bios and more. Song Sergeant intelligently identifies and removes duplicates, renames inconsistently named artists and albums, reunites orphaned song files to your library, and deals with missing song files.

Top 3 Best iTunes Cleanup Tool to Clean Up iTunes

As a wonderful media player computer program to play, download, save and organize music and video files on computer, iTunes has received great popularity among all people. This program helps you to manage contents on various Apple devices, like iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad devices. By connecting to the iTunes Store, you can purchase and download music, video, television shows, games, audiobooks, podcasts, movie, and ringtones. You can also download applications from App Store to iPhone, iPad and iPod through iTunes. With these practical and powerful functions, iTunes is no doubt a must-have for Apple devices users.

But, after repeated uses, it has been common for people to mess up iTunes library: songs with missed or incorrect artists, multiple duplicates of one song, missed music album info, missed music cover, etc. iTunes itself performs very pool in the internal cleanup work. In such case, you need to use professional iTunes cleanup tool to help you easily clean up iTunes and organize your iTunes library in a better way. The below are 3 most used apps for cleaning up iTunes library on Mac.

Song Sergeant: Lairware's Song Sergeant intelligently identifies and removes duplicates, renames inconsistently named artists and albums, reunites orphaned song files to your library, and deals with missing song files. Song Sergeant will whip your music library into shape in no time. Song Sergeant is uniquely capable of merging song files together instead of just crudely deleting extras, letting you keep the best song information and best audio quality even if they're from different song files. This iTunes cleaner program is mostly developed for deleting duplicates in iTunes.

Tunes Cleaner: Leawo's Tunes Cleaner for Mac is intelligent iTunes cleanup tool to repair and organize your iTunes music library in just a few clicks. This iTunes cleanup program is able to help you delete duplicates in iTunes, get album artwork for iTunes music files, add missed information including artists and album, add music information by searching key music tags of music files under manual input. Besides, its initiate scoring system brings totally different experience for you to view the iTunes music library health before and after cleaning. Based on the powerful online database, this iTunes cleanup tool provides massive fixes fast and accurately.

TuneUp: TuneUp Media’s TuneUp is another professional program to help clean up iTunes. This iTunes cleanup tool could help you easily fix mislabeled song info, remove duplicate songs, fill in missing album cover art, get concert alerts, music videos, artist bios and more. Rather than looking for duplicate and missing files, it attempts to clean up the tracks you have in your iTunes library by locating and applying the correct tags and album art to them.