I have thousands of duplicate music files on my computers for itunes. They make a mess of my library and take up hard drive space. How can I erase the duplicates without having to manually delete each one individually? I'd just want to do this for exact duplicates, not if the same song is on two different albums like a regular album and a greatest hits. Thanks...

If your iTunes application on Mac have updated to Version 11+, you can use the method Apple supported to show all duplicate items in your iTunes library. From the menu at the top of your computer screen, choose View > Show Duplicate Items. And then manually delete unwanted ones. Or if you are a Windows user, Hold down the Control and B keys on your keyboard to open the iTunes menu bar. Choose View > Show 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), hold the Alt or Option key (Mac) or the Shift key (Windows) and choose View > Show Exact Duplicate Items. This will show only the duplicate songs that have the same name, artist, and album. The information in the other columns, such as Time, Release Date, or Genre, can also help you determine which item to keep and which to remove. For example, the Plays column shows which version of the song you've listened to more.

For more details, check: Remove Duplicate Songs from iTunes

select them and delete them

in the itunes options (preferences) you can specify where your itunes folder resides so it's just a case of specifying the external drive.

You can have a try Leawo Tunes Cleaner. Just follow below steps. If you still have issues or have a massive music library in iTunes or other music folders that requires a more powerful and less time-consuming option, the third-party software like Leawo Tunes Cleaner can help you. It can not only automatically clean up duplicate songs in iTunes, but also automatically delete duplicate songs in other music folders. If you want to automatically remove duplicates in iTunes, the automatic duplicate remover might have the answer for you.
1. After kicking off Leawo Tunes Cleaner, click the "Clean-up Duplicate" entry. The program provides 2 duplicate scanning modes: Quick Scan mode and Deep Scan mode. Select one of them to scan duplicate songs.
2. You could delete duplicates in iTunes music library by directly clicking "Scan iTunes" button or click "Add" button to load music files for duplicates removing.
3. After loading source music files, click the "Scan" button on the upper-right corner to start scanning duplicates. The program would display all duplicates clearly and suggest what to remove. You could decide which duplicates to delete by checking them and then click the "Remove" button to remove duplicate songs.


For more details, check: How to Delete Duplicate Songs

You can have a try Leawo Tunes Cleaner. Just follow below steps. If you still have issues or have a massive music library in iTunes or other music folders that requires a more powerful and less time-consuming option, the third-party software like Leawo Tunes Cleaner can help you. It can not only automatically clean up duplicate songs in iTunes, but also automatically delete duplicate songs in other music folders. If you want to automatically remove duplicates in iTunes, the automatic duplicate remover might have the answer for you.
1. After kicking off Leawo Tunes Cleaner, click the "Clean-up Duplicate" entry. The program provides 2 duplicate scanning modes: Quick Scan mode and Deep Scan mode. Select one of them to scan duplicate songs.
2. You could delete duplicates in iTunes music library by directly clicking "Scan iTunes" button or click "Add" button to load music files for duplicates removing.
3. After loading source music files, click the "Scan" button on the upper-right corner to start scanning duplicates. The program would display all duplicates clearly and suggest what to remove. You could decide which duplicates to delete by checking them and then click the "Remove" button to remove duplicate songs.


For more details, check: How to Delete Duplicate Songs

It's not a hard work that you can have a try powerful program Leawo Tunes Cleaner. Leawo Tunes Cleaner is the Windows based professional iPhone cleanup software that could act as iPhone duplicate remover, iPad duplicate remover, iPod duplicate remover and iTunes duplicate remover to help you easily find and remove duplicate songs from iPhone, iPad, iPod and iTunes in clicks. And it help you fix your iTunes music library and other music folders by adding song tags and removing duplicate songs.If you're interested in it, please free download it and have a try
1. Download, install and open Leawo Tunes Cleaner. Choose the "Clean-up Duplicates" option on the main interface.

2. Select a duplicate scanning mode to detect duplicate songs in your iTunes from Quick Scan and Deep Scan. Quick Scan mode is based on song tags including name, artist, album, file size and time, while the Deep Scan mode adopts Accoustic Fingerprint tech for deeper scanning. Choose desired one.

3. Click "Scan iTunes" button to start scaning duplicate copies in your iTunes music library.

4. Via scanning, all duplicate songs would be displayed. You could play back all reference duplicates and determine which file to keep and which file(s) to delete. After selecting which files to remove, click "Remove" button. Tunes Cleaner would immediately delete all duplicate songs.
After you have removed all duplicate songs from your iTunes, sync your iTunes library to iPhone via USB.

For more details, check: Three Helpful Ways to Delete Duplicate Songs on iPhone

Why does iTunes Duplicate Songs When Importing The issue that iTunes duplicates songs when importing is quite common and many users are not clear on the reasons for it. In order to clear up this confusion for iTunes users, here are some main causes of this trouble.
1. When you find your iTunes duplicates songs when importing to the library, it may result from improper settings of your program. You may have checked the options of "Keep iTunes media folder organized" and "Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library". Thus, iTunes will repeatedly import a folder that is outside that iTunes Media folder into the library.
2. If the folder you add to iTunes library already has several duplicated songs, iTunes will import in all of them. Thus, you will find them duplicated in iTunes library.
3. If the songs you add to iTunes are untagged, iTunes will organize them all into "Unknown Artist/Unknown Album" and set the music name to "Filename". You will be unable to identify the song you need, for their name are almost the same.
4. iTunes does not have the feature to monitor your media folders when you import songs to the library. It just has trouble in detecting what is already on the library. This is one disadvantage of using iTunes itself to import songs.

Remove Duplicates after Importing with iTunes

Apart from avoiding duplicates before and in the process of importing, you can also use iTunes to remove duplicates after the importing. This aim can be achieved simply with the following steps.
1. Run iTunes on your computer and then click on "File" menu in the toolbar. Then you need to hit on "Library> Show Duplicate Items" in order.

2. You will see a list of all duplicates displayed in the right part of the iTunes screen. You can then click on a track or hold down the "Ctrl" key while hitting on multiple tracks to choose them.
3. When you have selected the items, you can click on "Song> Delete from Library" to remove the songs you have selected. The duplicated songs will disappear immediately from the iTunes interface. Thus, your iTunes library will be much clearer.

You should know that iTunes sometimes can confuse different mixes and slight variations shown in different albums. Therefore, you'd better make sure what you are removing is actually a duplicated and not a remix or version from a different album.


For more details, check: Why does iTunes Duplicate Songs When Importing

It's not a hard work that you can have a try powerful program Leawo Tunes Cleaner. Leawo Tunes Cleaner is a professional duplicate music remover.
Step 1. Run Tunes Cleaner and Scan Duplicate Songs
After kicking off Leawo Tunes Cleaner for Windows, click the "Clean-up Duplicates" entry. The program provides 2 duplicates scanning modes: Quick Scan mode and Deep Scan mode. Select one of them to scan duplicate songs.

Step 2. Add Music Files for Duplicates Removing
You could delete duplicate songs in iTunes music library by directly clicking "Scan iTunes" button or click "Add"button to load music files for duplicates removing. Or you could directly drag music files from your local folder to the software for duplicates removing.

Step 3. Start Deleting Duplicates
After loading source music files, click the "Scan" button on the upper-right corner to start scanning duplicates. The program would display all duplicates clearly and suggest what to remove. You could decide which duplicates to delete by checking them and then click the "Remove" button to remove duplicate songs.

For more details, check: How to Delete Duplicate Songs