Understanding how iTunes organizes it music. please help.

[direzz]

hi there, i have recently bought a blackbook a few months ago and it is a great machine.

I have been using itunes for years before on a windows pc, and i grew very attached to how it organized my music. a simple music folder incorporated with itunes.

now that i have switched to mac, and i love it by the way, i am just so confused with how itunes organizes my music and it drives me absolutely insane.

here are my concerns.

i share music with my friends. they send me songs, i send them my songs, now when i put these files into my music folder after they have been downloaded, i drag them into itunes, and itunes seems to duplicate the songs, and places them in a seperate itunes folder. is this nescessary? since itunes does this, should i just remove the original version of the song? i really cant have double the songs on my hard drive. have i explained this correctly?

why can i no delete songs within playlists in itunes? its very frustrating when i have to delete say 10-15 songs from itunes using the search tool. i have nearly 3000 songs, and this is a major hassle. the main cause of this is im having alot of doubled songs in my itunes which is driving me insane.

does anyone here use Limewire to preview songs before you download them? Well i do, and i get a little nervous when limwire automatically imports the songs to my library, when they are still in the shared folder. does itunes make a copy of the song within its seperate itunes folder in music?

thanks for any help, i really need to get this sorted out because i really hate having disorganized files. my music folder is pretty much a disaster.

also, is there any way to delete doubled songs in itunes? thanks.

 

[vniow]

now that i have switched to mac, and i love it by the way, i am just so confused with how itunes organizes my music and it drives me absolutely insane.

Err, iTunes behaves the same way on Windows and OS X. Both keep the music files on one specific folder with sub folders if you have the option which allows iTunes to sort and organise the files checked off in Preferences. If you don't then its a free for all really.

i share music with my friends. they send me songs, i send them my songs, now when i put these files into my music folder after they have been downloaded, i drag them into itunes, and itunes seems to duplicate the songs, and places them in a seperate itunes folder. is this nescessary? since itunes does this, should i just remove the original version of the song? i really cant have double the songs on my hard drive. have i explained this correctly?

You have the copy to iTunes when adding miles to the library option checked off then. If you want to keep everything in folders of your choosing deselect that and then drag the files to the iTunes window. It'll keep them where they were.

why can i no delete songs within playlists in itunes? its very frustrating when i have to delete say 10-15 songs from itunes using the search tool. i have nearly 3000 songs, and this is a major hassle. the main cause of this is im having alot of doubled songs in my itunes which is driving me insane.

There's a way to do this but I forget the exact command. Hold down a modifier key like command or option when you press delete and it should remove them from the library as well.

also, is there any way to delete doubled songs in itunes? thanks.

Edit (or View, I don't remember, its in the menu somewhere) -> Show duplicates and it'll display all you've got. Delete them accordingly.

 

[emw]

i share music with my friends. they send me songs, i send them my songs

You realize that this is most likely illegal, right? I'll assume for your sake that you're sharing material legally simply because I don't feel like getting into the argument right now.

now when i put these files into my music folder after they have been downloaded, i drag them into itunes, and itunes seems to duplicate the songs, and places them in a seperate itunes folder. is this nescessary? since itunes does this, should i just remove the original version of the song? i really cant have double the songs on my hard drive. have i explained this correctly?

iTunes has the option of copying or not copying music - go to your preferences to see this. If it's set to copy them, it will keep them nicely organized by artist/album/song. You can then delete the original songs from your HD.

why can i no delete songs within playlists in itunes? its very frustrating when i have to delete say 10-15 songs from itunes using the search tool. i have nearly 3000 songs, and this is a major hassle. the main cause of this is im having alot of doubled songs in my itunes which is driving me insane.

Playlists are references to songs - that is, songs can exist in many playlists. Deleting them in a playlist simply deletes the reference from the playlist but does not remove the file. This makes sense since you are likely to want to delete songs from playlists without removing them from your library. Use option-command-delete to remove them from the library.

 

[kolax]

iTunes is configured to organize your music folder and import any new media to the iTunes folder in an associated artist folder. You can delete the original once iTunes has imported.

This is great since it keeps everything in one place so when it comes to backing up you don't have to search your whole drive for your music.

Deleting from a playlist only removes the song from that playlist. This is ideal. I'd get really pissed off if iTunes removed the song from my computer just because I removed it from my playlist.

iTunes copies the LimeWire song once you have downloaded it to the iTunes folder.

 

[direzz]

wow thanks for all your help!

since itunes just imports all my music into its own folder im just going to delete the originals. its much more organized.

thanks !