Fix Duplicate Tracks From Different Artist Spellings (Feat vs Ft)

You know the frustration: you search for a track and find three copies. One lists the artist as "Drake feat. Rihanna," another says "Drake ft Rihanna," and a third reads "Drake featuring Rihanna." Same song, same artists—but your library treats them as completely different tracks. That's how duplicate tracks with different artist spellings, especially feat and ft, quietly pile up.

Why Feat and Ft Create Duplicates

Music metadata comes from dozens of sources—CD rips, download stores, streaming exports, and manual edits. Each source has its own convention. Some use "feat.", some use "ft", some spell out "featuring", and some drop the credit entirely. To a strict tag-matching tool, "feat" and "ft" are different strings, so identical audio files never get flagged as duplicates. The result is a bloated library, wasted storage, and messy playlists that play the same song twice.

How Dupes Finds These Hidden Duplicates

Dupes doesn't just compare filenames. It analyzes the actual audio and normalizes common artist variations—including feat, ft, featuring, and punctuation differences—so it recognizes when two files are the same recording. Instead of manually scanning thousands of tags, you get a clean list of true duplicates and can keep the version with the spelling you prefer.

Clean Up Your Library

Ready to stop hunting for "ft" versus "feat" mismatches? Grab Dupes and let it handle the tedious matching for you. Your playlists—and your storage—will thank you.