iTunes library much smaller than what appears in finder

[historyteacher]

Hey all,

So I have been trying to clean up a few things here and there on my 2008 macbook. Starting to run short on room and don't really want to have to carry around an external drive.

I noticed today with some snooping around that my iTunes music folder has like 39 GB's of stuff, but in iTunes my library is only 15 GB's.

Any solutions on how to free up the space would be much appreciated. Thanks!

mm

 

[GGJstudios]

So I have been trying to clean up a few things here and there on my 2008 macbook. Starting to run short on room and don't really want to have to carry around an external drive.

I noticed today with some snooping around that my iTunes music folder has like 39 GB's of stuff, but in iTunes my library is only 15 GB's.

Any solutions on how to free up the space would be much appreciated. Thanks!

It's possible you have music files that haven't been added to your library, but the most likely scenario is you have these boxes checked in iTunes > Preferences > Advanced:

Which means whenever you add new music to your iTunes library, iTunes makes a copy of it. If you don't delete the originals, you'll have duplicate files on your drive.

 

[historyteacher]

It's possible you have music files that haven't been added to your library, but the most likely scenario is you have these boxes checked in iTunes > Preferences > Advanced:

Which means whenever you add new music to your iTunes library, iTunes makes a copy of it. If you don't delete the originals, you'll have duplicate files on your drive.

GGJstudios,

Thanks so much for the reply. I checked and I do have both of those boxes checked. Before I start unchecking stuff that I have no idea what it really does I wanted to ask you. If I uncheck those boxes will my library become unorganized? Will I need to go manually find those copies of music that were made to delete them?

Again, thanks for the quick and useful help!

mm

 

[GGJstudios]

GGJstudios,

Thanks so much for the reply. I checked and I do have both of those boxes checked. Before I start unchecking stuff that I have no idea what it really does I wanted to ask you. If I uncheck those boxes will my library become unorganized? Will I need to go manually find those copies of music that were made to delete them?

No, the point is, if you have them checked, you should delete the copies that are not in your iTunes Media folder location.