IOS – Songs appear once in iTunes; listed twice on iPhone 5s (iOS 7)

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What do I need to do to prevent the iOS 7 Music app from listing songs twice when the song should only exist once?

I sync a selection of playlists to my iPhone 5s from iTunes 11.1.5 on my iMac running OS X 10.7.5. For at least one artist, album tracks are listed twice on my iPhone despite appearing only once in my iTunes library. I count 16 duplicates out of 53 songs for this artist on my phone. (The artist is Front 242, which I mention mostly for my own reference.)

I checked my iTunes library on the iMac, and I only have one copy of the affected songs there.

I am not using iTunes Match.

Curiously, during playback, songs are not repeated if I move forwards or backwards through a list that includes duplicated songs.

What I tried

In an attempt to solve this, I unchecked "Sync Music" and applied the change with my iPhone connected to my iMac, so all songs were removed. Then I checked "Sync Music" again (and thankfully my previous selection of playlists was preserved), and the music went back on my phone. Same problem.

What I didn't try

I haven't tried marking either individual albums or the artist for inclusion on my phone, just one or more playlists that include these songs.

I haven't tried swiping to delete individual songs, because I'd first want to determine all of the playlists containing that song, and do a time-consuming before-and-after check on my phone to ensure that removing the apparently duplicated song doesn't change my playlists.

Best Answer

What I would try:

  1. Make a current backup your iPhone via either iTunes or iCloud.
  2. Eject the iPhone from iTunes.
  3. iPhone Settings > General > Usage > Storage > Music > Edit > Delete
  4. Reboot your iPhone
  5. Connect your iPhone to iTunes and attempt to manually sync the playlists in question.