Relationship between library and playlists

[rstoomanyhobbie]

New to itunes. I copied my music over to itunes by creating playlists. Then I see that the songs are also in the Library thus taking up 2x the space. I deleted the library ...duh and now the playlists are empty. Can anyone explain how to create playlists to synch w/ the iPhone but not take up 2x the file space? Thanks!

[iNickM]

New to itunes. I copied my music over to itunes by creating playlists. Then I see that the songs are also in the Library thus taking up 2x the space. I deleted the library ...duh and now the playlists are empty. Can anyone explain how to create playlists to synch w/ the iPhone but not take up 2x the file space? Thanks!

They don't take up twice the space.

The playlist is just that. A list, which references the library.

[rockmyplimsoul]

Playlists do NOT double up the disk space used. A playlist is just a pointer to the items in them, so you can have a song appear in 100 playlists but have only one song in your library and on your computer.

If you're seeing your disk capacity diminishing as you add songs to iTunes, it is not the playlists that's doing it. More likely, your iTunes preferences are set such that iTunes is creating copies of your original files in what is known as the "iTunes Music Folder". If you already have mp3 files, when you add them to iTunes it is copying the original files to the iTunes Music Folder (typically C:\..\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Music).

If you don't want that to happen, then you can change your iTunes preferences such that the original files are used for iTunes/iPod ... but don't ever move those files or iTunes will lose track of them! To change this, go into iTunes' preferences and de-select the option "Copy files to iTunes music folder when adding to library".

[rstoomanyhobbie]

Thanks for the info! It will take a bit for me to get used to the iTunes logic. I'm using an iphone on my laptop to synch. contact, calendar and tasks and then my home pc has all of my music so trying to figure the best way to organize music going forward. Thanks again... rs.