We all love listening to music. It is perhaps the most favored pastime of this era and the evolution of smartphones has made things a lot easier. From downloading tracks of their favorites Artists to streaming online music, there isn’t much that you can’t get your hands on provided you have a decent enough Internet connection. One of the most popular media players of our time has got to be iTunes. It has won a huge number of extremely loyal customers in a short span of time and this has proved to be a win-win situation for both sides actually.
However, sometimes you might come across a person who will complain about the presence of duplicates entries of a particular artist in iTunes. This might sound a little confusing, but don’t worry as things will become crystal clear within the next few minutes. So let’s jump into the solution.
Solution 1: Fix through iTunes
This method is straightforward, but quite a time consuming provided there are a fairly large amount of duplicate Artists in the list. It’s not possible to use conventional tools to remove duplicate Artists, as the problem is basically related to the software itself.
- Double click on the iTunes icon to launch it.
- Locate the menu bar and click on View. If you cannot see the menu bar, simply press Ctrl+B and it will show up on the top of the window/ Now select Show Sidebar to open the sidebar from the left side of the iTunes application.
- In the Library section, select the Artists option to enter the category where it lists out all the Artists to whom your iTunes Library collection can be traced to.
- Now go through the list of Artists and keep an eye for any / all duplicate entries. The following screenshot shows a duplicate entry of the artist named Emma Bunton.
Duplicate artist entries! - Select either of the entries and make sure you can spot the same artist’s name in the panel located on the right-hand side of the screen.
- Click on the artist’s name so that you can edit it.
- Type the desired postfix value to the existing name such as the one showing in the following screenshot.
- Repeat this procedure for all the duplicate entries of the same artist. (Handle 1 artist at a time).
- Now remove the added postfix value.
- The problem must have been automatically solved at this point.
Before
After
Solution 2: Update the iTunes Client
This particular bug is most likely to be fixed in newer versions, and therefore it’s highly recommended to update the client to the latest version if it’s possible.
- Click on the Help item in the menu bar of iTunes.
- Now move the cursor a bit downward in the list that just opened and locate Check for Updates. Click it to initiate the scan for any updates that are available.
- The search wizard will search for any available updates from iTunes servers. If an update is available indeed, the client will begin the actual update download and installation process, otherwise, a dialog box will appear stating that the currently installed version is the latest.
Updates scan in progress - You will need to restart iTunes if an update was installed so that the changes can be permanently applied. Now quit it (whether an update was installed or not).
- Open the File Explorer (known as Windows Explorer in older Windows versions).
- In the address bar, type the following address to access the iTunes Music Library.
%userprofile%\Music\iTunes
- Locate the item named iTunes Library and then delete it.
- Relaunch the iTunes client.
- Select File item in the menu bar. Next, select Add Folder to Library.
- Select the folder where your music collection is stored.
- iTunes will automatically add all of those files to it’s Music Library.
- Now the duplicate issue in the Artist tab must have been resolved. If it hasn’t, follow the instructions provided in Solution 1 to get rid of any duplicate Artist entries.
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Raza Ali Kazmi works as an editor and technology content writer at Sorcim Technologies (Pvt) Ltd. He loves to pen down articles on a wide array of technology related topics and has also been diligently testing software solutions on Windows & Mac platforms. If you have any question about the content, you can message me or the company's support team.