iTunes makes copies of music?

When you add a song into iTunes, is the song copied into a different location?

I ask because I added all the songs from my iPod on my new mac and added them into the iTunes. I kept all of them in a folder and when I wanted to delete some on iTunes it listed them in a different folder. I want to delete the folder I had with all the songs to save space if they are duplicates in another folder.

The folder under itunes was my name/music/itunes/itunes music/ all the artists names...then albums...

Would it be safe to delete all the songs in the folder i made?

Thank you.

Check iTunes->Preferences->advanced->general


There is an option there called 'copy files to itunes music folder when adding to library'.
If that option is checked, then you can safely assume all the songs you've added to iTunes were duplicated.
Just to be on the safe side, maybe also compare the file sizes for both folders to see if they're almost identical. (select folder and hit apple+i)

Yes that option was checked. And the file sizes were the same.

What is the point of that option selected?

Well if you add music from a lot of sources (email attatchments, downloads folder, garageband recordings, cd rips) you might end up with a lot of songs spread out all over your harddrive, unless you manually added them all to one place.

That option takes care of that for you. You can optionally turn it off though, in case there's a reason you don't want all your music stored in 1 central location (I split part of my collection off onto an external harddrive).