Removing Apple Music duplicates on Mac without messing up external drive files

Question

Removing Apple Music duplicates on Mac without messing up external drive files

My Apple Music is on a Mac Mini 2023 M2 Sequoia with the Music Files on a USB-Connected external hard drive. Everything has been fine for a long time but now I have duplicates of practically every song (some times as many as 4 or 5 dups of the same song). They appear as duplicates on my Apple Music Library and as Duplicate Files in the Artist/Album folders on the external hard drive. If I delete the duplicates on the external hard drive (example will be: song_1.aif, song_2.aif and song.aif with 1 & 2 being deleted) they still show up three times in the Apple Music Library. If, instead, I delete them from the Library, and after I'm down to just two duplicates remaining in the Library, if I delete just one of the last two the .aif file disappears from the folder on the external hard drive. It puts it in the trash. The song remains in the Music Library and it actually plays even though it's missing from the folder on the hard drive. When I "get info" for the song and select "File" it shows that the file playing is playing from the trash. I have tried everything I can think of and I either have the song disappear or they remain as duplicates in the Library and/or the external hard drive folders.

I tried deleting some of the duplicate songs from the external hard drive and then did the Organize Library, Keep Media File Organized, and Copy Files to Media Folder When Adding to Library in various orders and either nothing changes or it adds the duplicates back to the external hard drive.

Even if I can successfully find a way to do this so I end up with one song in the Library and one corresponding song on the external hard drive, I have thousands(!) of songs to fix.

Does anybody know a work-around? Is there a third-party software I can purchase and install to simplify and speed up this process?

I can live with duplicate files on the hard drive but I can't have duplicates in the library. I have a few iPads wall-mounted around my house and I use the Apple Remote app to select songs to play. It's a total nightmare to select an artist and then an album and then see the first song listed four time, then the second song listed four time etc. etc.

Help!

[Re-Titled by Moderator]

Original Title: Apple Music Files a Mess

Mac mini (M2, 2023)

Posted on Jul 20, 2025 07:17 PM

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Answer 1

turingtest2

Level 10

277,729 points

Jul 21, 2025 04:13 AM in response to David Casemore

See Duplicate songs in iTunes/Music - Apple Community.

tt2

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Answer 2

Aug 7, 2025 02:19 AM in response to David Casemore

I had the same issue — tons of duplicates in both the Apple Music library and on my external drive.

What worked for me was using Cisdem Duplicate Finder. It allowed me to scan for exact duplicate songs in library in Apple's Music app and on the external drive, preview duplicates, and safely remove them.

I just followed the step-by-step guide on their official website. It was super straightforward.

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Answer 3

Limnos

Level 10

423,929 points

Aug 7, 2025 06:45 AM in response to David Casemore

A couple of thoughts:

Music can be good at following files when you relocate them, hence it playing from the Trash until you empty the Trash. Even then you may end up with a broken entry in your library.

You also have to note what it says when you delete an entry in the library. I haven't done much with the new Music (I used iTunes 7 until last month *sigh*) but from what I recall, deleting an entry resulted in you being asked what to do with the actual file.

Read what turingtest2 wrote in his linked post.

The Music library listing is what it thinks is your file organization. It doesn't absolutely have to be accurate. A bit like the old card-catalog for a book library. The catalog could say there is a copy of book X on the shelf, but there could be no copies or there could be 3 if things got messed up. Or book X could be on a different shelf if it was moved there but the librarian didn't know that.

A big question is why you are getting all these duplicates. In 20+ years of using iTunes/Music I have only ever had one or two duplicates.

You say you are using Apple Music, but Apple—for reasons only known to itself—is terrible at naming things and loves to give different things the same name. So "Apple Music" is a subscription service too, part of iCloud. Things become very tricky when you are using Apple's music subscription service and trying to organize things yourself. I don't know if we have to factor you using the subscription service too.

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