MacOS – How to resolve duplicate “in the cloud” songs in iTunes 11

iclouditunesmacos

When I installed iTunes 11, for some reason it re-downloaded all my purchased "in the cloud" songs even though they were already in my library. So now I have duplicate songs, one that matches the cloud, one that has my rating, playcounts, etc. For example:

duplicate songs

I want to tell iTunes that they're the same songs- I tried to delete my old copy then, when it asks me to locate it, point to the new copy, but when I delete the cloud entry it doesn't realize that they're the same. Is there anything that I can do to fix this?

Note: I do not have iTunes Match, and this is on a Mac, if that's relevant.

Edit: Of course I could delete my local copy and download and use the cloud copy, but I want to keep ratings and play/skip counts.

Best Answer

Like Harry reported, the problem can be dealt with by disabling "Show iTunes in the Cloud purchases". But then you don't see your Cloud-based music if you haven't downloaded everything.

I found that re-enabling this option seemed to reconnect with Cloud and resolve the duplicates problem without losing any history.