Where to download SongKong

[paultaylor]

@records

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

Now you have preview disabled on the first run it saves songs details as it goes along, so when you cancelled and rerun it it could skip matching the songs already matched and so had less work to do and hence was faster.

@records

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

Okay that is probably because we disabled the Save to Music option, so the files have been moved but Music app doesn’t know that. I think what you need to do is select all songs in Music and then right click and select Get Info that will update the details.

But I also wonder why you have 45,000 songs processed by SongKong but only 33,000 in Music app library. By default on MacOs when you add songs to iTunes a copy is made of the file and the copy is added to the library, if you have this enabled i wonder if you are processing the original file with SongKong rather than the copy made by Music app, you could select a song in Music app and do Get Info to see what the file location of the file is.

It would also be helpful if you could run Create Support Files so I can review the results of Delete Duplicates for you.

[records]

OK. Done. Select all songs in library; Get Info. Start. “Processing” Something is happening, as I can see very gradual moving of the progress bar (song titles flying by). Upon completion, no change that can be seen in Music/List View. The same number of songs, 33,686 shown at bottom of window, and known duplicates can be seen. Two system reboots; no change.

I’m rerunning, from Get Info forward, and will report. I’m semding support files again.

[paultaylor]

Hi, I looked at your reports. I can see you have 47,724 songs on your /Users/Don/Music folder, and Delete Duplicates moved 8,063 Duplicates, this would leave 39,661 in your music folder, except for the fact your duplicates folder is /Users/Don/Music/SongKong 8.3 duplicates. So might make sense to move this to a location that is not under /Users/Don/Music and run Status Report again.

I can see files analysed and duplicates consist of both files under Music app folder and files that are not

/Users/Don/Music/Audio Hijack/Music Temps/Dupin purged/08 I Love Rocky Road (Demo).mp3]
/Users/Don/Music/Music/Media.localized/Music/Weird Al Yankovic/Dr. Demento’s Basement Tapes 09/08 I Love Rocky Road (Demo).mp3

this is probably why Music has less files than your hard drive

But you may have a problem with files that are deleted not being removed from the Music app, do you see files in the Music app with an exclamation mark (!) beside them?

If so you could use https://dougscripts.com/itunes/2021/09/updated-super-remove-dead-tracks-v6-0/ to remove these tracks.

The problem may also just be that some songs have been identifiied and deleted as duplicates, but not all, difficult to say but if you check for a file in Music app that was deleted accoroidng to Delete Duplciates report such as

/Users/Don/Music/Music/Media.localized/Music/Weird Al Yankovic/single/Theme From Rocky XIII (The Rye Or The Kaiser).mp3

that should make it clear which way the problem is.

If that song is still shown in Music app, then you need to run the DougsScript script or similar to tidy up the Music app library. If the song is no longer shown in Music app then maybe you just need to adjust the Delete Duplicates settings to pick other duplicates.

[records]

I’ve run status report again. Do you receive it with this or do I send it to you. If so, how? I do know where it is in my user library.

There is now just one copy of I Love Rocky Road in my Music library.

I see no ! files.

There are two copies of Theme From Rocky XIII (The Rye Or The Kaiser) showing in my library.

How would I adjust Delete Duplicate settings?

Which Doug;s script are you recommending in your last paragraph?

[paultaylor]

@records

I’ve run status report again. Do you receive it with this or do I send it to you. If so, how? I do know where it is in my user library.

If you run Create Support Files it will be sent with that.

@records

There is now just one copy of I Love Rocky Road in my Music library.

I see no ! files.

There are two copies of Theme From Rocky XIII (The Rye Or The Kaiser) showing in my library.

So can you still play both songs in Music app, what are the file locations of the two files ?

@records

How would I adjust Delete Duplicate settings?

Maybe change from Same MusicBrainz song and same album (any version) and sounds the same to Same MusicBrainz song and same album (any version) thjis will pick up songs that seem to be same song but dont have matching acoustids because maybe a different encoding.

There are many songs that were not matched to a MusicBrainz album so you could also find more duplicates by setting to Sounds the same only, this will just use the Acoustid to match, the problem with this method is if you have the same song on two different albums it may be identified as a duplicate and you may want to keep both copies to maintain two complete albums.

But you need to use your own judgement really, it depends what you consider a duplicate.

@records

Which Doug;s script are you recommending in your last paragraph?

The one I recommended earlier in the same post and gave you the link for.

[records]

There are two copies of Theme From Rocky XIII (The Rye Or The Kaiser) showing in my library.

Both appear to be in the same folder of 115 songs by same artist. I can not tell if they are from from various albums or just a duplication of same. Most, I had just put “single” in the album field.

Just one example of the duplicates that were not removed from my Music App Library.

"If I “change from Same MusicBrainz song and same album (any version) and sounds the same to Same MusicBrainz song and same album (any version) thjis will pick up songs that seem to be same song but dont have matching acoustids because maybe a different encoding,” would this defeat my purpose, which is to remove duplicates that sound the same?

“setting to sounds the same only” … would this be exactly same “fingerprint?” If so, would this be the way I keep both versions of a song that has same title and artists, but does not sound the same? Examples would be Rex Harrison singing the same songs, but in different recordings, of the original cast My Fair Lady and the movie soundtrack; Robert Preston in The Music Man … many more like this? Also same artist rerecording same song, such as many Beatles tracks, or different mixes from same masters … they clearly do not sound the same, and I don’t consider them duplicates, nor do I want them removed.

I don’t think I care about mantaining the original integrity of compilation albums. As I curated my library, starting with dubbing records to hi-fidelity cassettes in the 1970s and 1980s, I deliberately did not duplicate songs that “sounded the same.”

But would this solve the problem of my having the same number of tracks in my [All] songs list view of Music App as before we started, and I am finding many of same title/artist/sound (but sometimes a few seconds different in length which I have always thought could be attributed to slightly different editing by re-issue editors who may simply alter the length of space between tracks or the difference between releases on varying media through the decades.)

Just spot checking through th thousands of on-screen “pages” of the songs view, I find many many examples of same title; same artist; same sound. At least one of these in each grouping is a duplicate I want removed.

I know this is a long and wordy, perhaps redundant response, but I want to be sure we’re on the same page as to the goal, considering my fear of all this time and effort which either does not remove apparently about 4,000 duplicates still in the Library, or, much worse, removing some that are not actually duplicates.

[paultaylor]

@records

Both appear to be in the same folder of 115 songs by same artist. I can not tell if they are from from various albums or just a duplication of same. Most, I had just put “single” in the album field.

If you do Song Info and then go to the File tab you can see where the song resides, can you do this for both songs please, I will follow up your other questions later.

[paultaylor]

@records

"If I “change from Same MusicBrainz song and same album (any version) and sounds the same to Same MusicBrainz song and same album (any version) thjis will pick up songs that seem to be same song but dont have matching acoustids because maybe a different encoding,” would this defeat my purpose, which is to remove duplicates that sound the same?

It depends what you mean by sound the same, its not black and white, I would recommend you try in Preview mode, look at the results and make a judgement.

@records

“setting to sounds the same only” … would this be exactly same “fingerprint?” If so, would this be the way I keep both versions of a song that has same title and artists, but does not sound the same? Examples would be Rex Harrison singing the same songs, but in different recordings, of the original cast My Fair Lady and the movie soundtrack; Robert Preston in The Music Man … many more like this? Also same artist rerecording same song, such as many Beatles tracks, or different mixes from same masters … they clearly do not sound the same, and I don’t consider them duplicates, nor do I want them removed.

Correct, the only drawback would be if same song on multiple albums but as you say

@records

I don’t think I care about mantaining the original integrity of compilation albums. As I curated my library, starting with dubbing records to hi-fidelity cassettes in the 1970s and 1980s, I deliberately did not duplicate songs that “sounded the same.”

probably not an issue, again I would recommend running in Preview mode first.

@records

But would this solve the problem of my having the same number of tracks in my [All] songs list view of Music App as before we started, and I am finding many of same title/artist/sound (but sometimes a few seconds different in length which I have always thought could be attributed to slightly different editing by re-issue editors who may simply alter the length of space between tracks or the difference between releases on varying media through the decades.)

No, we havent managed to track this down yet, hence my earlier question about checking file location.

[records]

Hopefully, this will be helpful:

These three are all the same record.

.

I have many sets of two and three like this, with identical sound, same or slightly various duration.

Would the various duration, no more than 3 or 4 seconds, preclude acoustid callng them duplicates?

It has occurred to me, if you feel I’ve made identifiable mistakes, rather than waste more of your time patching my errors, and maybe running risk I’ve damaged my library, it would be wise to restore my entire music folder to it’s Time Machine state the day before we started, and start over, with all settings as you would recommend we should have begun

[paultaylor]

The important thing here that i didn’t know is these files are stored on the cloud, doesnt that mean they are not normal files on your computer and therefore not available for SongKong to fix.

[records]

I don’t know to answer your question. What can we do next (or over/better) to remove acoustid duplicates from my Music library?

[paultaylor]

Okay I think it does mean that.

So Delete Duplicates already deleted 8000 actual files on your computer, and in previous reply I showed how you could modify your options, run in preview to check the results and then run again to find further duplicates. So you should do this to remove actual duplicate files, and you can use Status Report to check for any remaining duplicates.

Then, if all your songs are stored on your hard drive it might be best to simply create a new Music library based on your songs. I’m sorry I haven’t used Music with iCloud so I’m not familiar with how it works but I don’t think anything you do locally will affect the songs you have in Music that are stored on iCloud.