Duplication of Files in iTunes

[CommonMan]

Okay, here's the deal. My wife and I both have iPods. We share the same iMac and iTunes. Our taste in music is similar but different enough that there's a lot of songs she has put in the iTunes library that I don't want on my iPod. The simple solution is to create different playlists and to set up our iPods to draw from different play lists. And I realize there's other ways to "keep it seperated." Here is my concern. If I copy a ton of songs from our iTunes library to my playlist(s), will this not, in effect, be duplicating the files on the hard drive? I'm afraid that if we approach the problem like this, we will very quickly consume all the space on our hard drive.

 

[72930]

No, if the song is in the library, having it in more than one playlist takes up no more space.

 

[WildCowboy]

No, the files exist in only one place on your hard drive. The playlist is just like a directory...it's a list that tells iTunes or your iPod which tracks to play and in what order. It does not duplicate the actual files.

 

[CommonMan]

Okay, who is correct here? I hope that the person who said adding songs to the play lists DOES NOT take up more space is correct. That would be terrific. I guess we could do an experiment to find out.

 

[WildCowboy]

We both said the same thing...adding a song to a playlist DOES NOT duplicate the file.

 

[CommonMan]

Conditions

No, if the song is in the library, having it in more than one playlist takes up no more space.

Psycho, I notice you say "if the song is in MORE THAN ONE playlist." What if the song is in the library but not in any playlist (condition 1) and then ONE sone from the library is put in a playlist (condition 2). Does condition 2 take up more HD space than condition 1? Does condition 2 in effect add the number of bytes of the song file to the hard drive again?

 

[WildCowboy]

The only additional space taken up by adding any song to any playlist (regardless of whether the song is any other playlists or not) are the few bytes taken up by adding the file's name to the playlist file.

For all intents and purposes, Condition 2 doesn't take up any more hard drive space than Condition 1.

Edit: For example...say I create a playlist in iTunes called "Mashups". It contains 8 songs. New entries are created in the iTunes Music Library.xml file that look like this:

	<dict>
		<key>Name</key><string>Mashups</string>
		<key>Playlist ID</key><integer>18752</integer>
		<key>Playlist Persistent ID</key><string>A0126E0C9D5B030F</string>
		<key>All Items</key><true/>
		<key>Playlist Items</key>
		<array>
			<dict>
				<key>Track ID</key><integer>4922</integer>
			</dict>
			<dict>
				<key>Track ID</key><integer>4923</integer>
			</dict>
			<dict>
				<key>Track ID</key><integer>4924</integer>
			</dict>
			<dict>
				<key>Track ID</key><integer>4925</integer>
			</dict>
			<dict>
				<key>Track ID</key><integer>4926</integer>
			</dict>
			<dict>
				<key>Track ID</key><integer>4927</integer>
			</dict>
			<dict>
				<key>Track ID</key><integer>4928</integer>
			</dict>
			<dict>
				<key>Track ID</key><integer>4929</integer>
			</dict>
		</array>
	</dict>

That's all the gets added...no duplication of the actual file.