Launched this week
Song Sweeper
Remove duplicate songs
166 followers
Remove duplicate songs
166 followers
Song Sweeper is a first-of-its-kind iPhone app for cleaning up messy Apple Music libraries. Find duplicate songs across different albums, unify album editions, surface songs you no longer listen to so you can remove them, and favorite your most-played tracks to improve recommendations.
Song Sweeper
The duplicate detection across different albums is the feature I've wanted for years I have the same song from the original album, a deluxe edition, and a live recording all showing up separately and it drives me crazy. Curious how it handles the edge case where two versions are actually different enough to keep, like a studio version versus a meaningfully different live recording. Does it let you preview both before deciding or does it make the call automatically? Also the tagline about your library reflecting who you are today versus 10 years ago genuinely resonated — that's exactly what a cluttered music library feels like.
Song Sweeper
@zerodarkhub thanks so much, I'm happy to hear it can solve your problem. Right now Song Sweeper detects duplicates from different albums (so the deluxe example would be detected). But it does consider special versions of songs with certain key words like "live" or "remastered" - these would not be marked as duplicates.
That being said I've gone back and forth on how this situation should work, might add a setting for this option.
How would you expect it to work?
Wow! it sounds so useful! Just a question - does it make sure to delete the right duplication? For example - sometimes iTunes uploads the same album twice, but one of the duplications is not available for playing when you press on it.
Song Sweeper
@yotam_dahan Thanks so much! In my testing it does detect exact duplicates (in addition to the primary use case of same song, different albums). I have not considered this use case of one song simply not playing, it's a good idea.
BUT this can still work for you. The way it decides which song to delete is by keeping the song with the most songs in your library from that album. However you can expand every duplicate group of songs and manually select which to delete or keep. You can press play on each song (tap or long press) to see which does or doesn't work.
I hope you enjoy it!
Cool feature guys! Really like it! Quick question: how do you detect duplicates — by metadata, audio fingerprinting, or MusicKit matching?
Song Sweeper
@denious thanks for the vote of confidence. Good question, I use metadata for matching.
I'm not sure what you mean by MusicKit matching.
This is such a specific problem that I didn't know I needed solved until right now. My library is genuinely embarrassing with how messy everything is. Love that you built this out of personal frustration, always makes for the best products. Quick question, any plans to expand beyond Apple Music, like Spotify support down the line?
Song Sweeper
@aya_vlasoff Thank you! I really appreciate it. The plan was to support Spotify but sadly that is impossible because last year they blocked small developers from ever using their APIs. For example you need 250K monthly active users as just one of the requirements.
Visualizing the 'clutter' is a great way to start cleaning up. Does the app provide a preview of the songs it's about to remove before the final sweep? Great work on this!
Song Sweeper
@linapok yes it absolutely does. When deleting songs it technically adds them to a playlist in Apple Music where you need to do the final deletion. This is both to help with safety as you mentioned and because Apple blocked the ability for apps to directly delete songs.
@gradygaugler That makes total sense! Using a playlist as a safety buffer is actually a great idea to prevent accidental deletions. Thanks for the detailed reply and best of luck with the launch!
I like the idea. It's a pain point with all that old stuff.
One question here, I share my Apple Music account with my kids, so my library is full of Disney soundtracks and nursery rhyme compilations mixed in with everything else. When Song Sweeper surfaces tracks I "no longer listen to," will it flag all the kids' music for removal?
Is there a way to tag or exclude certain styles from cleanup?
Song Sweeper
@alex_kerya good question. It surfaces these by using a filter menu you can control. Right now the primary filters are play count, date added, and last play date. You also can do partial searches. Nothing for genre right now but I like that idea!
@gradygaugler Got it. Partial search works as a workaround. Genre exclusions would be the cleaner fix though. Would love to see that.