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Eliminating Library Duplicates
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You probably have duplicate songs in your library. This often occurs when you have an album but also a single related to it, or a song also appears on a compilation.
Why is this bad? Firstly, they take up space. Secondly, because the same song exists as two or more separate files, they are treated as entirely different songs. Playcounts are separately kept. I find this, plus the multiple files, confusing.
Here's my handling:
I consider the album senior to singles and compilations.
If I own an album and a related single, I rip the album in its entirety, then all songs from the single minus duplicates. If I own a single only, I rip all songs. If I then buy the album, I retag the duplicate song from the single as the one from the album. I do this to preserve the playcount and rating.
I have a set of compilations, many songs of which I also own on albums. After deleting the compilation duplicates, I had removed so many that the compilation structure was gone. I resolved this by setting up playlists for each of the 48 CDs and then adding all the songs that belong on them. Now I can play one of these compilation CDs and get all the songs in the correct order. I recommend this if you have a number of compilations as above.
You can save a lot of space by doing the above. I have asked Apple to implement a better solution: aliases. I want to be able to create an alias of a song and tag it independently of the original. That way, I could have the original "Song X" ripped from the album "Album X", then create an alias of it for "Single X". The alias would have different album, track and disc number and album art tags, but would have the same playcount, rating and date played. No matter if I played the song from the album or the single, this data would remain constant, which makes sense, as it's the same song.
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by japester on Feb 03 | 7:00 am
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