[Lateralus]

Like many people I've developed the habbit of downloading CDs from the net, and then buying them if I think they're worth keeping in my collection. As was the case last week when I decided to replace yet another one of the In Extremo albums in my iTunes Library with songs ripped from my newly purchased hard copy of the CD.

I had done this in iTunes 4.x repeatedly and without fail. As long as the tags match verbatim, you have the option to replace the songs that are on your drive with the songs that are being ripped from the CD and things like play count are preserved.

But iTunes 5 is not letting me do this. I've checked, double checked and tripple checked to make sure the tags match 100% and when importing the CD I just get duplicates of the songs. Not replacements.

What the crap? Doing something wrong?

[ghporter]

The songs you downloades from the iTunes store are not identical to what you ripped from the CD, as they're copy protected; iTunes may be seeing that as a difference beyond the simple matching of tags and thus identifying the existing, downloaded songs as "version a" while the CD songs are "version b." Just a guess...

[lavar78]

Are the dupes in the same folder in the Finder? IIRC, the things that had to be the same were title, artist, album, track number, and year.

A workaround: Go to the files in the Finder (make sure you know which ones are which). Delete the newly ripped files in iTunes, but keep the files. Delete the old files in the Finder and trash them. Now attempt to play each song in iTunes. It won't find the file, so it'll ask you to locate it. You can point it to the new file and all of your play counts and things will be preserved.

[Lateralus]

Originally Posted by ghporter

The songs you downloades from the iTunes store are not identical to what you ripped from the CD, as they're copy protected; iTunes may be seeing that as a difference beyond the simple matching of tags and thus identifying the existing, downloaded songs as "version a" while the CD songs are "version b." Just a guess...

I didn't download them from iTunes.

[Lateralus]

Originally Posted by lavar78

Are the dupes in the same folder in the Finder? IIRC, the things that had to be the same were title, artist, album, track number, and year.

A workaround: Go to the files in the Finder (make sure you know which ones are which). Delete the newly ripped files in iTunes, but keep the files. Delete the old files in the Finder and trash them. Now attempt to play each song in iTunes. It won't find the file, so it'll ask you to locate it. You can point it to the new file and all of your play counts and things will be preserved.

I'll try that. Thanks.

[ghporter]

Sorry, bad assumption on my part... I don't (haven't yet, anyway) buy songs from iTMS, but that seems to be the default for most Mac users.

anyway, what lavar78 said sounds like it should work quite well. You don't even have to try to play the songs, just "Get Info" on them.

I'm still curious why iTunes is duplicating the songs... But there's a lot about it that puzzles me.

[Lateralus]

I found the problem: The tags that iTunes auto-retrieved for the album put it down as a Compilation, and all compliations go into a Compilations folder when imported. So I de-selected Compilation in the album info window and that did the trick.

Thanks fellers.

[lavar78]

You're welcome. I knew it had to be something!

I really hate how people tag all "greatest hits" albums as compilations. Yes, they are in the literal sense, but not for practical purposes.

[Maflynn]

Originally Posted by Lateralus

I found the problem: The tags that iTunes auto-retrieved for the album put it down as a Compilation

That's the one thing I truly hate about iTunes is that it puts too many albums in the iTunes category. I think there's a setting to turn that off - I stumbled upon it a while ago and turned it off.