iTunes Match and Duplicates: Beware of Missing Tracks

If you use iTunes Match, when iTunes scans your library to match your music, it will find some that it can match, some that it must upload, but it also may find “duplicates.” Apple defines the Duplicate icon as:

This icon is displayed when a duplicate version of this song exists in your iTunes library on your computer. This icon will be displayed next to duplicates that were not uploaded to iCloud.

Apple’s description of this isn’t clear, and I hadn’t encountered any duplicates yet. I did this morning, however, matching some music by Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara. iTunes found one track that was a duplicate, on one of about 20 albums I matched. (It was indeed a duplicate: the exact same work, in the same recording, is on a two-disc set of Complete Works for String Orchestra as well as on a box set of 12 Concerts). What is interesting is what iTunes did with this track.

Since it’s a duplicate, it’s not uploaded. But since it’s a duplicate, it no longer shows in my library on the second album on which it is found. In other words, if I go to listen to the second album, I won’t hear that track. There’s no placeholder in my iTunes library to say, “hey, this track is over here.” If I play this album, it will skip from track 18 to track 20, as track 19 is matched from a different album.

This is a bit disturbing. I can understand wanting to save space by not having duplicate tracks, but this means that if you have, say, some albums by a popular performer, along with a “best of” album, then you won’t find many or all of the tracks on the latter in your iTunes library after matching.

Since I hadn’t tried matching my entire library – it’s too big – and am only using a small test library, I didn’t come across this issue before; for example, my complete Bob Dylan collection, being purchased from the iTunes Store for the most part (except for the recent remasters of the original mono recordings), all show as purchased, and not as matched. (That’s not exactly true; some of the purchases show as uploaded, but that’s another problem…) Duplicates among purchased tracks are ignored.

So I tried adding another album twice, with two different album names (with just one letter different in the name). Interestingly, iTunes found duplicates, but, of the six tracks, found three duplicates on the first instance of the album and three on the second.

It seems there is no way to get around this. iTunes Match doesn’t look at tags, so if you change the album name – as I did – it will still see through your ruse. This seems to be a serious weakness in iTunes Match, and one that needs addressing. Perhaps there needs to be a tag for files that are duplicates but that you still want to upload. What would make more sense would be iTunes creating a sort of “alias” for the duplicate file, so you don’t have to upload it, but can still play it.

What about you? What is your experience with duplicates? Have you come across a lot of them? Did you even notice that some are ignored?

(By the way, if you’re interested in 20th-century music, check out some of Rautavaara’s music. Good places to start are the two box sets, one of concertos, mentioned above, and another of his 8 Symphonies.

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