I know, I know, it’s my own damn fault for buying Apple to begin with.
However, what’s done is done.
That said, I just ripped all my old CDs using Windows Media Player, and I saved them all in one folder (with each artist becoming its own subfolder), and then I added that folder to my iTunes library.
Now, as I am watching iTunes “convert” my audio files (into what, I don’t really know), I notice that there are songs appearing twice or even three times in the library.
Now, I know for a FACT that I only ripped “Derelicts of Dialect” ONCE, and I never downloaded it or any of its tracks from anywhere, so why in the heck does “Al’z A-B-Cee’z” show up THREE TIMES in my library?
More importantly, how do I get rid of this, as I’m sure it’s happening over and over again?
Go to the preferences, look around a bit within, then find the check box that wants to copy your songs to another itunes folder. Then, disselect it. You may have to delete the dups.
If I’m understand what you’re asking, you can just go to iTunes, and under the “File” tab there’s a “Show Duplicates” option. Click on that and it will group all the duplicates. Just be sure you’re deleting true duplicates (same song title AND album) as opposed to just the same song title, because it will pull those up too.
If you happen to have made any playlist files (.m3u files for instance) that are in that folder they will cause itunes to import another copy of those songs.
Go to Preferences, Advanced and uncheck the box that says “Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library”.
If this box is checked, iTunes automatically copies the newly ripped mp3 from your designated music folder to the default iTunes folder, then it logs both copies into your database.
It’s a dumb as hell way for a database management program to work, but that’s how Apple made it.