I’m trying to delete a bunch of music that I don’t want anymore. When I went into my music folder, the file names seem to be random letters that have no relation to the actual song name. Is there a way I can change the file names to the song titles that display in iTunes?
You can delete the songs from iTunes, you know, and there’s either a setting or a prompt when you do so that will also delete the files off your hard drive.
It currently says “Are you sure you want to remove the selected songs from your iTunes library? These songs will also be removed from any iPod or iPhone which synchronizes with your iTunes library.” Does this mean it will be removed from my hard drive as well?
Yes.
Okay, that didn’t work. It still shows I have over 3000 songs on my hard drive, but iTunes is down to only 300.
Check your preferences in itunes to see where you files are being stored and go there *Edit>Preferences>Advanced *there should be a box that says itunes Music folder location. Open that folder in Windows (assuming you’re using Windows) and see if the songs are still there.
I just tried this, and iTunes does not delete the file - it moves it to the trash (on OS X, presumably the Recycle Bin on Windows), so you will need to empty the trash before you get your disk space back.
Yes (FWIW).
You can have media in your iTunes library that is not in your iTunes music folder.
When you try to delete these from your iTunes library you will only get the “Are you sure you want to remove the selected songs from your iTunes library? These songs will also be removed from any iPod or iPhone which synchronizes with your iTunes library” message.
If the music is located in your iTunes music folder (as it’s set in the preference panel) you will also get a dialog asking if you want to keep file or move to trash (recycle bin for windows)
Try this with one song first or make a backup of everything in case it does’t work!!
It sounds like the best thing for you to do is to remove the song from iTunes, then put it back into iTunes with the ‘copy music to my library’ and ‘keep iTunes library organized’ options checked. Verify that the file has been copied and renamed to the title name (you can right click, show file in finder in iTunes). Then drag the original file to the trash. All files that you give this treatment should then prompt you ‘keep file or move to trash’ if you then try to delete them from iTunes.
eta
the ‘keep iTunes library organized’ option should rename the file to the track name when the file is copied into the iTunes library. (one thing I need to focus on is answering the actual question that someone asks)