Program to find duplicate song files?

June 1, 2006 1:55 PM

Looking for a (preferably freeware) program that will scan multiple hard drives and return duplicate music files based on MD5 checksum or similar method. I am using Windows XP.

I've found plenty of programs that will calc a checksum one at a time, but not in batch mode and none that I have found will match up duplicates based on checksum. I am aware of the Itunes ability to find duplicates but I need something that will find 'true' duplicates regardless of differing tags/filenames etc. and give me back the matched pairs in a list. I only care about doing this with MP3, WMA and M4A files.

posted by mattholomew to computers & internet (6 comments total)

For not-XP:

find / -name '*.mp3' -print0|xargs -0 md5sum|sort

You could install Cygwin if you like the idea of doing things like this easily. ;)
posted by kcm at 1:58 PM on June 1, 2006

It's not exactly what you're looking for, but it's pretty close: Musicbrainz
posted by gwenzel at 2:32 PM on June 1, 2006

DupeGuru
posted by softlord at 2:44 PM on June 1, 2006

Finding and eliminating duplicate files.
posted by gleuschk at 3:05 PM on June 1, 2006

MediaMonkey...better than you are actually asking for.

http://www.mediamonkey.com

It's a bit hard to find it in all of the options (Options --> Library), but if you check the box that says "Analyze tracks for duplicates (takes extra time) " you'll actually find SONGS that are the same (the underlying music) not just a file. What I mean is, when you've got ID3 tags in songs that are different, but the underlying bits are the same in the song, it'll figure out if it is the same MUSIC underneath and someone's mucked with title, tags, or something else.

Other options are talking about the WHOLE music file being the same, Music + Tags + Filename.
posted by wogbat at 4:33 PM on June 1, 2006 [2 favorites]

Cool, I actually have MediaMonkey but didn't realize you could do that with it. Thanks!
posted by mattholomew at 4:41 PM on June 1, 2006