PostPoints tip: De-duplicate your iTunes music

If you've been collecting music on your computer for long enough and from enough sources, it's easy to wind up with more than one copy of a song. To find these extras in Apple's iTunes program, select your music library in the left-hand sidebar, go to the File menu and select "Show Duplicates..." You will now see a list of songs with the same, or almost the same, title and artist. Some of these aren't real duplicates (for instance, when one version of a song comes from a live album). But in many other cases you'll see that you've accumulated multiple copies without noticing it. This often happens when you rip a compilation album, like a movie soundtrack, that overlaps with other recordings. But it can also occur after upgrading an iTunes Store purchase to Apple's higher-quality, no-usage-limits-attached iTunes Plus format; iTunes is supposed to delete the old copy but can forget to do that when the new, iTunes Plus download has a slightly different artist, album or title.