PC Jukebox

[Mr. Lamb Fries]

I've got a bunch of MP3's on a hard drive. Right now I am using WMP 10. I have experimented with Music match, but it wont do all I would like. I was looking for a good PC Jukebox to organize them all. My problem is I've got a bunch of duplicate recordings. They may be listed under albums, playlists, artists greatest hits, compilation cd's...etc.

Does anyone know of a good (free would be nice) program that I could download that would organize all the MP3 files and set them up into one giant playlist. I would like to combine everything and eliminate duplicate songs.

What Audio PC Jukebox do you use?

 

[Hi Ho]

I use WMP 10. I haven't found anything I like better. It should be doing everything you're wanting. Is there a particular problem you're having that is making you want to switch?

 

[niget2002]

I use something like http://musicbrainz.org/

Then I do a search for *(1)*.mp3 on my computer. That shows me all the duplicates. Do the same for *(2)*.mp3 and so on until no results are found.

This helps to get rid of the duplicates.

 

[Zuke]

www.winamp.com

 

[drunkmunk]

Here's another vote for winamp

 

[Mr. Lamb Fries]

I use WMP 10. I haven't found anything I like better. It should be doing everything you're wanting. Is there a particular problem you're having that is making you want to switch?

Ive just got TONS of duplicates and going through them would take years. Ive got them all on an external hard drive. There is not enough room on my PC'cs drive for them. I could get rid of a bunch but I want to have a playlist like Music match with out all the duplicates. I would also like to keep the music on the external hard drive. Not download it on my main HD.

I am looking for a program that can search the contents (music) of the mp3's and get rid of duplicates. Some are mis-tagged which makes it difficult to just get rid of MP3's with the same name.

I would also like the program to support V-cast. not a necessity but would be a bonus

Can winamp do this? I read the product description and it doesnt seem to have this option.

 

[GarrettMaster1]

I am experiencing the same issue. I have roughly 130 GB of music (radio archive purposes) I have estimated about 2,000 songs are duplicates. The issue is that I cannot find a program that will delete the extras off of the hard drive. I have tried Winamp, iTunes, and WMP10.

 

[MDS]

I think WinAmp can remove duplicates. iTunes does as well. The problem is what constitutes a duplicate?

If you have two files with the EXACT same name but in different directories then they will be found. It's not possible to have two files with the exact same name in the same directory.

In some cases, files that you may consider to be duplicates may not be - as an example the 'radio edit' of Golden Earring - Twilight Zone is 4 minutes long but the original version is over 7 minutes. If they are both named Golden Earring - Twilight Zone then iTunes will find them but it might be a mistake to remove one if you really want both versions. For those cases, it's better to just rename one and add [Radio Edit] or something similar to the end.

Is there a specific pattern to the names of your duplicates? Like they were created by Windows Explorer and the dup is named 'Copy of xxx' or the duplicate has a (2) at the end, etc? The best solution might simply be to write a script or a short program to identify the dups and then manually remove them.

 

[Mr. Lamb Fries]

I think WinAmp can remove duplicates. iTunes does as well. The problem is what constitutes a duplicate?

If you have two files with the EXACT same name but in different directories then they will be found. It's not possible to have two files with the exact same name in the same directory.

In some cases, files that you may consider to be duplicates may not be - as an example the 'radio edit' of Golden Earring - Twilight Zone is 4 minutes long but the original version is over 7 minutes. If they are both named Golden Earring - Twilight Zone then iTunes will find them but it might be a mistake to remove one if you really want both versions. For those cases, it's better to just rename one and add [Radio Edit] or something similar to the end.

Is there a specific pattern to the names of your duplicates? Like they were created by Windows Explorer and the dup is named 'Copy of xxx' or the duplicate has a (2) at the end, etc? The best solution might simply be to write a script or a short program to identify the dups and then manually remove them.

Manually removing would take forever. A lot of the duplicates have the same name but the versions are different. I would not want to loose (or be unable to access) the different versions of the songs. Someone told me of a program that would search the actuall music and eliminate the duplicates. The songs with the same name but different versions would still be intact. I could then go through and re-name the versions of the songs. I have no way of getting a hold of that person and was hoping someone here has heard of this program (if it even exists). I was hoping that would be included in a program that also has a Jukebox.

I tried using Musicmatch, and liked the layout. But I was unable to get rid of the duplicats with it.

I migh need to Manually go through my library.

 

[Hi Ho]

May I ask how you ended up with so many duplicates? I don't believe I have any on my PC.

Did you try the program niget2002 linked to?

 

[avnetguy]

As long as you can sort by Title/Aritst you should be able to manually weed out most of the duplicates pretty fast. A music comparison search would probably take a significant amount of time and wear on the hard drive. Even a music search would need some strict criteria as song intros and outros may not be exactly the same but the rest of the song might be. Better yet, buy a bigger hard drive ... they are cheap now a days.

Steve

 

[MDS]

So there are duplicates with the same filename, but obviously in different directories. So how is the version different? Is it that one may be a Live version and the other studio or things like that? Or that one version came from one particular CD and another came from a different CD and that info is in the ID3 tag?

For those there is no way to do it automatically.

I would suggest downloading iTunes and then import the whole library. iTunes will list them all alphabetically and you can sort by artist, album, genre, etc by just clicking on the column headers of the grid. If you sort by song name you will easily see the duplicates. You can display the file size and path to the file as well so you can see where they actually reside on your drive.

You can then listen and rename, delete, etc.

Just how many mp3 do you have? I can't imagine it taking forever - painful yes but doable.

 

[Hi Ho]

I would suggest downloading iTunes and then import the whole library. iTunes will list them all alphabetically and you can sort by artist, album, genre, etc by just clicking on the column headers of the grid. If you sort by song name you will easily see the duplicates. You can display the file size and path to the file as well so you can see where they actually reside on your drive.

WMP 10 can do exactly the same thing along with virtually all jukebox programs. I know Itunes is popular but I personally can't stand it. I don't like the way it forces the install of Quicktime and it runs superfluous processes in the background at all times, even when Itunes is not running.

 

[niget2002]

I used the software I linked to earlier. It took overnight for the software to go through all my music.

I didn't say it would be fast, and there were a few hiccups with some of the songs. You can tell the software how you want the filenames and sorting done. Once done, it id3tagged all of the songs as well. It will add a (1), (2), etc to all the filenames as it comes across duplicates. Then it is just a matter of getting rid of (1).. etc. This also works if you have the same song in different bitrates... just keep the largest file out of all the duplicates.

 

[Mr. Lamb Fries]

May I ask how you ended up with so many duplicates? I don't believe I have any on my PC.

Did you try the program niget2002 linked to?

My brothers and I downloaded all of our music and labeled them differently. Some in shorthand, some labeled with the album in the tag, some remixes with the same tag
For example (not exact example but many songs have similar, multiple tags)
ACDC's Back in Black:
AC/DC Back in Black
Back in Black
bck n blk
AC/DC bck n blck
ACDC Live collectors- back in black
ACDC Back in Black- Back in Black
ACDC Back in Black- You Shook Me All Night Long
1.ACDC Back in Black
2.ACDC BACK in Blck Live
Etc...

I would like to get a master list by artist. listing the artist-ACDC and when I click on the artist, a list of songs follows.

I looked at Niget2002's link. Is it the Musicbrainz tagger your suggesting. Am I right to assume that I would have to:
Download, import songs (playlist), got through each artist, and manually delete the songs that are duplicats that may have different tags?

To use my example above, Would this program list the song labled "Back in Black" under ACDC, AC/DC, or Back in Black, or all of them?

Thanks to all for your help

 

[niget2002]

My brothers and I downloaded all of our music and labeled them differently. Some in shorthand, some labeled with the album in the tag, some remixes with the same tag
For example (not exact example but many songs have similar, multiple tags)
ACDC's Back in Black:
AC/DC Back in Black
Back in Black
bck n blk
AC/DC bck n blck
ACDC Live collectors- back in black
ACDC Back in Black- Back in Black
ACDC Back in Black- You Shook Me All Night Long
1.ACDC Back in Black
2.ACDC BACK in Blck Live
Etc...

I would like to get a master list by artist. listing the artist-ACDC and when I click on the artist, a list of songs follows.

I looked at Niget2002's link. Is it the Musicbrainz tagger your suggesting. Am I right to assume that I would have to:
Download, import songs (playlist), got through each artist, and manually delete the songs that are duplicats that may have different tags?

To use my example above, Would this program list the song labled "Back in Black" under ACDC, AC/DC, or Back in Black, or all of them?

Thanks to all for your help

You would Download the software, point it to the directory wih all your music, and it will pull the songs in. Then you just tell it to start.

When it is done. It will have two lists of outcomes. One list is of songs it could find, one is of songs it couldn't find.

Scroll through the list of songs it could (sort by % correct). Verify anything that is less than 95% accurate is correct (usually only takes a quick scan through the names). Then click on save. It will then go in and sort, rename, move, and tag all the songs.

The ones it couldn't find takes more work, but at least this gets you started.

For your example. You would end up with a single directory (i have mine as c:\mp3\%artist%\%album%\) with a listing of each of the songs such as:

ACDC - Back in Black.mp3
ACDC - Back in Black (1).mp3
ACDC - Back in Black (2).mp3

To get rid of duplicates quickly and easily:

Open Find... search for *(1)*.mp3 Select all and Delete

 

[Hi Ho]

In WMP, you can go to All Music and click "Artist" at the top to sort by artist. Clicking any of the column headings will sort the list accordingly. Righ-clicking will bring up a menu with more heading/sorting options. Is this not what you're wanting to do?