I can not find a download link for Song Kong (Mac OS version). Please mail link to donsherman@mac.com.
Also, will I be able to find duplicates with correction to Mac Music app, list view, or must I work from Finder folders (and would this leave the listings for removed duplicates in Music with a “!” for disconnected or unfound item?)
Did you try the download page ?
Yes in simple steps
This will find duplicates and inform Music app of any files deleted so dont end up with the excalamation mark next to files that it can non longer find.
Thank you for your prompt and reassuring response. What is your charge for the paid license. Will the offer appear after the free processing is completed?
Hi, no offer will not appear after processing
You can download, install and run SongKong but without license it will run in Preview mode and will show you results without actually changing any files. To switch off preview mode you need to purchase a license from the Shop page, standard license is £30 and pro is £40. Apply the license to your version of SongKong and now you can switch off preview mode.
SongKong ran for about 24 hours and reported it was about 90% complete, having found about 4,000 duplicates, when we had a power outage.
I found no indication that the partial run had been saved, so I started a new one. It ran for a few minutes and ended, reporting no duplicates found. I ran it again, quit after a few minutes, no duplicates found.
Is there a way for you to guide me through the settings, or monitor my moves? Maybe review screenshots of my settings?
Can you run Help:Create Support Files please
Thanks for support files, looking at first Delete Duplicates report, it ran for one hour and didnt find any duplicates
I suspect issue is the songs have no metadata and you need to run Fix Songs first to add the metadata to allow duplicates to be found. But you have no license installed and hence nothing will be saved, so you need to install your license and disable Preview Only option.
If this were the case, why would my earlier attempt have run for 22 hours and report having found over 4000 duplicates among some 30,000 songs, before quitting when the AC power was interrupted? My subsequent runs are the ones for which you are seeing the failures.
I have “Get Infoed” a random selection of hundreds of songs here and there all over my library and they all have meta data (unless my understanding of metadata is incorrect.)
Am I correctly remembering that your advertising says a user can do a trial run to see how many duplicates they have before paying to have the duplicates moved into a designated folder? I am more than willing to purchase the app, but I’d like some reasonable expectation that it will work in my case (approximately 40,000 songs with about 10% duplicates.
Many that would be thought to be duplicates by title and artist will be known not to be when Acoustids and metadata readings are made.You yourself have pointed out that multiple versions of same artist/same title can exist, which is why I am excited that SongKong may be able to do what the Mac OS system and other apps that look only at other indicators, can not.
It would be very helpful to me, and perhaps other new users, if you could provide a step-by-step list of actions for a trial run, to be followed by removal of duplicates under license, if wanted.
Its a bit curious because as you can see from screenshot it says Delete Duplicate Report 1, indicating it was the first report run, but maybe you reset some things, perhaps you need to run File:Empty Cache Anyway the key feature of SongKong for most people is Fix Songs, this will identify the songs and improve metadata (and add MusicBrainz Ids), this will then allow Delete Duplicates to work well.
However you can run Fix Songs in preview mode and see report with all details before you buy, but this will not improve Delete Duplicates reports if only ran in preview because Delete Duplicates will work off what data is actually in the files.
No, maybe confusing with another application.
But it does work, just read the reviews or maybe someone on the forum can post you reassurance, there is nothing else I can do.
Progress report:
I instructed SongKong to place duplicates in a designated folder I had made called SongKong duplicates.
I selected Fix Songs.
I selected options including not to alter album art and to disregard albums in determining duplicates.
SK ran in trial mode for 2 days 19 hours 48 minutes 26 seconds. It scanned 47,699 songs in my music library.
I now have a page called “Fix Songs Report 7. Preview Only, no actual changes will be made to your music files” There is a tab for Options, but it just returns the same page.
I also clicked on “Errors and Warnings: 206." I don’t understand most of the items, but I’m concerned that many of the entries say, “Unable to load cover art…” Since I didn’t want my cover art changed and clicked so in the options before running the scan, this concerns me. Does it mean SK will change my cover art, despite my wishes that it not?
I can copy and send you these pages if you provide an email address of other instructions for uploading this info to you.
My designated folder for depositing duplicates is empty, so I expect that my next step is to purchase a license, and that if I do, SK will move the songs it found to be duplicates will be moved into my designated folder. I searched for SongKong in the Mac App Store, but could not find it among the dozen apps that were returned from my search. How does one download and pay for a license to your app?
After I pay, download, and follow whatever instructions come with the app, will the duplicates then appear in the folder I designated? If not, what’s next?
As you can see if you read our correspondence prior to this, as well as these questions, I am hopeful of making SK work to accurately identify acoustically identical records in my library, and have already invested days and hours into the effort.
It sounds like your report is not showing properly, maybe due to a browser setting could do two things for me:
Fix Songs identifies files add metadata (making it easier for Delete Duplicates to find Duplicates) but doesnt find duplicates itself so I am not sure what option you mean when you say you instructed SongKong to place duplicates.
You can purchase a license from the Shop page
I ran Create Support Files. Please acknowledge you have received this.
You asked me to take a screenshot of Fix Songs Report 7. How do I forward the screenshot to you? You asked how report looks. On my 27" IMac, the report is readable, but only a small fraction of it can be read without panning and scrolling.
What I meant by instructing SK to place duplicates was that one of the questions I answered was to pick a folder into which (I thought it meant) duplicates would go. I still have a very limited understanding of how SongKong works, so I apologize if my interpretation of this question was incorrect. I do recall that it had brought up a standard Mac Search panel in which I navigated to the new folder I had named “SongKong duplicates.” Maybe that was my mistake.
I have made a point of copying the link you just provided to your Shop page, so I can open it at the appropriate time. I hadn’t seen this before.
Should I mention that I also see a very long and wide spreadsheet I was able to open in Mac OS Numbers app. It has perhaps ten category columns and appears to have an entry line for each of my 47,700 songs, SongKong has “fixed.”
BTW, I find this forum awkward to navigate. Since our correspondence seems to be limited to my particular problems, probably not very interesting to, as you say, thousands of other functioning SK users, maybe we could continue by email? – donsherman@mac.com
Hi, thanks I have received the support files, you can just paste the screenshot as a reply on this forum topic. I paste a couple of screenshots below from it to see if it appears similar to you
As you can see here about 88% of songs were matched to an album
And you can use Browse menu to drill down into detail
The handful of errors about images just means for a few songs that SongKong could not read the images when it loaded the songs into internal database, but this does not mean that SongKong will modify images, it will not because you have Update Artwork set to No
I don’t really understand why previously you could not see the Download link and now you say you have never seen the Shop link, they are at the top at the website http://www.jthink.net/songkong/
All support is via the forum, this is much easier for me to manage than email the discourse software that we use is generally accepted to be the best forum platform available. Also these discussions are useful to other customers.
In summary Fix Songs has been quite successful in identifying your songs, so I see no reason why the Delete Duplicates task would not work well as well. I also noticed your existing songs had very little decent metadata in them so finding duplicates without first identifying them in SongKong is unlikley to yield good results.
Hi, I removed the link to spreadsheet because i already have it as part of support files, and because you probably don’t want to share your music collection publicly.
I was hoping for an actual screenshot, I think what you have sent me is something you have constructed in a photo editor program, I assume you do have a the menubar part although not shown on your screenshot. Having said that Javascript appears to be enabled so really I cant see any issues here, I think you just just need to purchase a license and run Fix Songs for real
I am running Create Support Files again in the hope that this will
Help you advise me whether I need to run Fix Songs again or if that is now complete, and I can try Delete Duplicate Songs again. (Or if there is another step I’ve left out.)
I don’t mind repeating Fix Songs, but this would be the third time, and it takes a couple of days for the 47,700 songs in my music library.
Status Report 12
Status Report Summary
Summarizes metadata completeness of your songs, for each field it shows the percentage of songs that have this metadata. You can improve your metadata by using the automatic Fix Songs task
47,724 songs checked
Selected Folder :/Users/Don/Music
Song Artwork Metadata Completeness Summary
Song Metadata Completeness Summary
Artist: 47,337
Report 12 started at Jun 13, 2022, 2:10:16 PM
Report 12 finished at Jun 13, 2022, 2:16:17 PM
I havent received any support files yet but the previous times you had only run in preview mode and so had no effect, so I expect you do need to run it and ensure Preview Only on the Basic tab is unchecked.
I started another attempt to send you support files. The window says Started at June 15, 2022, 4:44:02 PM [PDT], but shows no progress. Please let me know if you receive the files, and if they help you troubleshoot why, after two 2-day Fix Songs scans, I can not Delete Duplicate Songs.
I see the example window you posted with a Fix Songs header and Preview Only unchecked. Makes sense, and I remember that when I ran my previous two Fix Songs 2-day scans, I had seen this window and been able to uncheck Preview only. However, today SongKong will not allow me to uncheck it. Maybe I’m out of allowed Preview Fix Songs runs and SK doesn’t know that I bought a Pro License?
I think I you have explained, and I now understand that there are two phases to use of SK to identify and isolate actual duplicates. The first, Fix Songs, is to add metadata to each song, and the second, Delete Duplicate Songs is to use that data, along with Acoustic fingerprints to move the duplicates to a designated folder. If I have this wrong, or incomplete, please tell me, as it may help me understand why I am stalled now.
Thanks, I have now received the support files and can see preview is enabled for all runs. it wouldn’t make sense for you to have been able to uncheck it since you didn’t have a license, also I can see you still have not installed your license so SongKong is still in Lite mode !
That is correct, all I would add is when you run Delete Duplicates (after running Fix Songs) consider changing the value of Song is a duplicate if has same - I would recommend setting it to Same MusicBrainz song and same album (any version) and sounds the same
I followed your instruction and re-ran Fix Songs. This time it completed in only about 9 hours. I don’t know if that’s a good or bad signal. Here’s the summary
Delete Duplicate Songs appears to have run its course, reporting [Summary] “Task completed successfully.” My SongKong Duplicates folder now is 31.72 GB with around 2100 songs. I moved the duplicates folder to an external drive, dismounted that drive, and restarted the Mac (three times). However, the Music App in list view still shows approximately the same number of songs and I can readily identify many duplicates by title, artist, album, length, and they sound the same. Music app list view showed 33,686 songs before SongKong, and still shows the exact same number.
