iTunes Match: Will Syncing Two Computers Create Duplicate Songs?

[JPM42]

I have both an Macbook (where my primary collection resides) along with an iMac, which has some of what my Macbook has. I would love to finally have my music collection both in sync on both machines, but I'm curious about some issues in doing this:

1. I have already enabled iTunes Match on my Macbook. If I were to do the same on my iMac, would all the songs on there that are already on the Macbook also be uploaded to the cloud, thereby creating duplicate entries? Or would iTunes Match detect the songs that are in my Macbook already and not upload what's on the iMac (provided the metadata was identical)? I'm afraid of doing this and then I see a bunch of duplicate entries everywhere on each computer, screwing things up.

2. Would the smart thing to do be wiping out my iTunes library on my iMac and just download on there whatever is from my Macbook? The only reservation I have in doing this is that, due to special remastered discs, mono albums, etc., having the Matched copy wouldn't be feasible.

So I'm curious on the best track or at least the experiences of anyone who's been using iTunes Match across multiple computers.

Thanks!

 

[WisdomWolf]

What I did was just launched iTunes with a new library on my macbook so that it was clean. This allows me to access all the cloud functionality from my laptop (iTunes Match was initially enabled on my Windows 7 Desktop) without having to sacrifice/murder my current library. I'm afraid to see what happens when you try to enable two computers with near identical libraries.

 

[Pheelyx]

Me and my significant other both share an apple id for our music and apps. We both had our own music collections on our computers. I set mine up to match first and then set his up.

It did not duplicate anything even the songs that we had in common already. The only instance we had in duplication was we both had an ABBA collection which were both named something slightly different. Also the track times were slightly different for some reason and this caused match to thing they were separate albums. I just ended deleting mine off my computer and then pulled his version from the cloud to mine.

I hope this helps.

 

[Tones2]

I have both an Macbook (where my primary collection resides) along with an iMac, which has some of what my Macbook has. I would love to finally have my music collection both in sync on both machines, but I'm curious about some issues in doing this:

1. I have already enabled iTunes Match on my Macbook. If I were to do the same on my iMac, would all the songs on there that are already on the Macbook also be uploaded to the cloud, thereby creating duplicate entries? Or would iTunes Match detect the songs that are in my Macbook already and not upload what's on the iMac (provided the metadata was identical)? I'm afraid of doing this and then I see a bunch of duplicate entries everywhere on each computer, screwing things up.

2. Would the smart thing to do be wiping out my iTunes library on my iMac and just download on there whatever is from my Macbook? The only reservation I have in doing this is that, due to special remastered discs, mono albums, etc., having the Matched copy wouldn't be feasible.

So I'm curious on the best track or at least the experiences of anyone who's been using iTunes Match across multiple computers.

Thanks!

1) It will not duplicate your entries. It will syncronize the libraries such that the SAME songs will be listed on both libraries but not duplicated, but the "iCloud" status will be different depending on what is physically on each computer. Changes made to EITHER library to metadata or additional songs added (or deleted) will be reflected in the other library, assuming that you update after the change. I'm doing this and it works pretty well, for the most part.

2) No, that would be the dumb thing to do. There is too much inconsistencies in the matching proces right now, and you may not get what you expect (explicit vs clean, short version vs long, original vs remix, stereo vs mono). What I've been going is SLOWLY going through things that I want to upgraded to 256 kpbs song by song and making sure the replaced version is what I want before replacing it. It's tediuous yes, but I only have to do this once and it's mostly over, so it's worth the time, especially since I can do it piecemeal when it's convenient.

Tony