Advanced music file matching feature (ignore tag data)?

[openhatch]

Here's a weird one. The same compressed music file (say, an .mp3) has been copied to another place, but the music tags in one file changes. MD5 checksum therefore shows them as different files, while in practice they are the same file (they have the same compressed music stream, only different tags).

This happened to me; I thought I'd check both files in detail to see. If I use a tool like tag & rename to wipe out the mp3 tags in both files, they turn to exact duplicates.

I realize it may be pie-in-the-sky, as it would involve (possibly) identifying a lot of different tag formats, but..

I wonder if there could be a mode where identical music files are found *without* consideration for file tags? Read in the music file, discard all tag data, then run the duplicate content check on what's left. Could be a huge boon in cleaning up scattered/unorganized music collections..

[therube]

(

The same compressed music file (say, an .mp3) has been copied to another place, but the music tags in one file changes.

WMP has a habit of updating/modifying tags regardless of how hard you try to not allow that to happen. For that reason, I forgo the use of WMP.)

On the "not quite so duplicate, duplicates" have you tried (unchecking) Options | Read Music Tags?

[Fool4UAnyway]

WMP has a habit of updating/modifying tags regardless of how hard you try to not allow that to happen. For that reason, I forgo the use of WMP.)

Does it still succeed when the files are marked as read-only?

[DV2]

It's a good idea, just reading the binary music 'chunk' and ignoring the tags. This could be another search type to add.