[Rab Mush]

whenever I download an album (onto my desktop) I will always move the album to another folder called "stuff" after that, I drag the folder from stuff and put it over the itunes icon in my doc adding it to my itunes library.

I'll either do that, or I'll drag the downloaded album from the desktop (which I where it was downloaded to) over itunes, and move it to "stuff" from the desktop afterwards.

I'm running out of hard drive space, and while I move all of my music from "stuff" to my itunes library, my library is about half the size of stuff because of deleting files I don't want in itunes. I have a stuff folder that is 10GB, and a itunes music folder that is 5GB. I'm wondering, if I delete my stuff folder, will my itunes get all messed up? I remember that on the windows version of itunes my sisters use, if you put a song in itunes, and then delete the song from whatever folder you added to itunes from, the song won't be able to play in itunes.

Thanks to those who can help!

[abbaZaba]

move it and see if it affects anything. if it does, then don't delete it

[Warren Pease]

If you have "Copy files to iTunes Music Library when adding to library" checked in the Advanced tab of iTunes preferences, then you are getting a copy of each album you add to iTunes. In which case you can delete a copy and still have a backup somewhere on your harddrive. If it's from the iTunes library, it will show a "!" near the files it can't find.

Not sure why you would want two copies of music floating around and for my money, iTunes organization is fine for what I want.

[Rab Mush]

Thanks guys One more question... can I make it to where the original files I added to my itunes library are moved to the "itunes music" folder?

[TETENAL]

Yes, that's the Advanced->Consolidate Library command for.

Do that, and if you have "Copy files to iTunes music folder when adding to library" checked in the preferences, you never need to keep anything in an external "Stuff" folder again.

[Rab Mush]

If I do consolidate my library... is that also going to be adding tracks to my library from anywhere on my Mac, or do I still get to add albums manually?

[Rab Mush]

One bump for good measure And I did end up deleting those extra copies of my music. Cleared up 10 or so GB for more music

[swiz]

Originally Posted by Rab Mush 

If I do consolidate my library... is that also going to be adding tracks to my library from anywhere on my Mac, or do I still get to add albums manually?

No, that only happens when you first setup iTunes. Consolidating just moves everything that iTunes is already aware of and shows in your library to your music folder, then you can delete any music that is not in your music folder and your library will not be affected.
As long as you have the option selected to keep iTunes music folder organized and to copy songs to it when adding manually, you can drag music manually into iTunes and then delete it from where-ever you originally "dragged" it from because it will now be copied to and organized in the iTunes music folder.