How do you make iTunes not duplicate your music when importing it

[levmc]

If I have for example 20 gb of music files that I import to iTunes, it seems like iTunes makes a copy of it in its iTunes library which means I now have 20 gb of duplicate and that much wasted space. Is there no other way of doing this?

(I was able to make it stop by clicking the X button that showed on top middle of iTunes).

 

[James_C]

Yes there is, however you should first consider the advantage of keeping your music in the iTunes /Music Library. The key advantage is you will keep all your music in the same place. If ever you want to move your library to a new Mac you can just copy the music folder over and just point iTunes/Music to it.

Personally I would move the original files to an Archive disk after you have imported, and keep in the library.

However if you want to keep your music files separate from the Library you can do this. Go into iTunes / Music preferences and click the files tab. Turn off the option to copy files to the Media Folder as shown below.

 

[levmc]

I unmarked "copy files to Music Media folder...", then deleted about 70 gb of files in the Music folders that were already copied. Then I re-imported all of them, and now I have many albums within iTunes that have duplicates with first of each duplicate not playing (because deleted). How do get rid of all deleted files from iTunes?

 

[tonyr6]

This is why I wish MusicBee was available on macOS. The music app is a mess when importing your music. It creates duplicates and if you subscribe to Apple Music it also creates duplicates in there too.