5 Best Free Duplicate Song Finders

These applications will help clean up your music library

By
Mark Harris
Mark Harris
Writer
  • University of Wolverhampton
Mark Harris is a former writer for Lifewire who wrote about the digital music scene and streaming music services in an easy to understand, no-nonsense manner.
lifewire's editorial guidelines
Updated on January 20, 2021

Unless you have a perfect memory or keep a well-organized list of your songs, you'll end up with at least one duplicate file in your library. Finding duplicate files by listening to your entire music library is impractical. Duplicate file finders are great to use in this situation for cleaning up your music collection and reclaiming lost hard disk space.

If your music is stored on iTunes, use iTunes to find and delete the duplicate files instead of installing another program.

01
of 05

AllDup

AllDup
What We Like

  • Scan multiple folders at once.

  • Compare using multiple factors.

  • Scan inside ZIP and RAR files.

What We Don't Like

  • Can be hard getting started.

AllDup includes an impressive set of features for a free duplicate file finder. It seems to have options only seen in the premium versions of similar tools.

Some of the better features include being able to search through multiple folders or hard drives at once and compare files from all sources or just within the same folder. This level of precision sets this one apart from other duplicate file finders.

On top of that, AllDup can compare files byte by byte as well as by file attributes and other normal criteria (such as name, extension, and size). What's more is the ability to scan inside RAR and ZIP files, explicitly include or exclude file types and folders, and preview the music without exiting the software.

There's both a normal and portable version of this duplicate file finder.

02
of 05

Duplicate Cleaner Free

Using audio mode in Duplicate Cleaner Free


What We Like

  • Scan multiple file times.

  • Tune your file search.

  • Control what you want to remove.

What We Don't Like

  • A trial of a paid edition.

This free duplicate file scanner for Windows has the facility to deep scan various music formats such as MP3, M4A, M4P, WMA, FLAC, OGG, APE, and others.

Its interface is easy to use and has an impressive range of options to fine-tune your search. The selection assistant is particularly useful for quickly marking files for deletion based on your criteria.

Criteria can include matching audio tags like the artist, title, and album, as well as the genre, length, year, any comments, and others. Otherwise, you can have the search only look for duplicate audio data and ignore any tags.

You can also use search filters that take into account the file's creation and modified date, size, and file extension, plus search through Zipping archives.

Once Duplicate Cleaner gives a list of results, use the selection assistant to mark what you want to be deleted. Some of those options include keeping the file that's the longest, smallest, has the shortest name, or even deleting every duplicate but one.

This program is only a trial of the professional edition. However, even though it isn't the full software, it still functions as an easy way to find and remove duplicate files so long as the group is limited to 100 files or less.

03
of 05

Similarity

Results screen for found duplicates


What We Like

  • Well-organized interface.

  • Supports multiple formats.

  • Compares based on the file content.

What We Don't Like

  • Interface is pretty ugly.

Similarity is a stellar freeware program that searches for duplicate music files. It uses advanced algorithms that compare audio files based on sound content rather than binary patterns.

Similarity also looks at MP3 tags and has an experimental mode for deep scanning. Results are shown in the Results tab.

Right-click files for options, such as to see a spectrum or sonogram analysis of the files to see how similar the files are.

The program is compatible with a range of lossy and lossless audio formats such as MP3, WMA, OGG, FLAC, ASF, APE, MPC, and others.

04
of 05

Duplicate Music Files Finder

Adding search folders to find duplicates


What We Like

  • Simple to use.

  • Scan folders and subfolders.

What We Don't Like

  • MP3 only.

  • Dated interface.

  • Requires Winamp.

This duplicate file finder compares music files by searching for matching filenames, MP3 tags, CRC checksums, and file sizes.

The settings is where you decide which music files the program should scan for and if it should look through subfolders.

Even though the program interface as a whole isn't super up-to-date, the results are displayed side by side so that you can compare the size and name of the duplicate files, and select which ones should stay or go.

Duplicate Music Files Finder also comes with a built-in set of tools for managing your files. For example, it can rename badly formatted music files automatically by looking at the song's metadata and renaming the file accordingly. There's also a quick tag editor and you can play duplicate files to check them before deletion.

If you don't have Winamp installed, the program complains about it, but a quick reconfigure pointing to where your favorite media player is installed will fix that.

05
of 05

Easy Duplicate Finder

Easy Duplicate Finder
What We Like

  • Simple to use.

  • Scan multiple drives and folders.

  • Save scan results.

What We Don't Like

  • Might be too simple for some.

This duplicate file finder holds true to its name. It's very easy to use. The wizard walks you through each step, and there aren't a ton of confusing options that get in the way.

Start by choosing the folders or hard drives that should and should not be included in the scan, the file types that it should and shouldn't look for, and the maximum and minimum file size to further cut down on the results.

Click through the wizard to see the results and find the options for deleting the duplicate music. For instance, you can automatically keep the newest or oldest version or manually delete the one you don't want.

You can even save the duplicate list to a DUP file so that you can open it again in the future without having to re-scan.

Was this page helpful?