Is there a way to make iTunes NOT add every song you play to the Library?

I don't mean:
preventing iTunes from copying the song to the iTunes folder. (I know that can be turned off.)


I mean:
to prevent iTunes from automatically adding a played song to the iTunes Library list.


(edited because the way I said it seems to have confused everyone ;p )

Could you try and rephrase your question. I am having a hard time understanding what your asking.

check in the prefs.

G'day remain,

Can I ask you for what purpose this is? I understand that you wish to play a song using iTunes but you don't want iTunes to display the song in the library.

What I do is just delete the song from the library and if prompted, from the Hard Drive. I don't know of anyway to achieve what you ask for.

If I want to listen to songs that I'm not sure I want to keep, I either drag them into a playlist and then option-delete them (this deletes the actual song files in playlists as well or play them with VLC/Quicktime.

DO you mean "stop them from playing but keep them in the library?"

On Windows you select anything that you don't want to play when you've got shuffle mode on and then right click it and there is an option to not play it when in shuffle. This is handy if you have pod casts that are say lectures for example.

There is no way that I know of to get iTunes to play a song and not add it to the library. Instead, I use cog to play files that I just want to listen to once then delete or not add to the library. That way I can just leave iTunes to manage my library and not worry about random snippets I might want to listen to.

There is a way my friend. Go into the Preferences. Go to the advanced section. The first popup menu is labeled "On CD Insert" Open the popup menu and set it to "Show CD". I just tried it and it did not add the tracks I played to the library.

Sorry. I just read your post again and realized what you are really trying to do. I don't know how you could do that other then getting a separate app to rip your CD's outside of iTunes, Then manually add them to iTunes if you like them.

I reworded the original post. I didn't realize it was THAT incomprehensible. XD

I'm glad SOME people did understand what I meant.
(that is, to play a song, but without iTunes automatically adding it to its Library list)


I see there isn't any direct way to do this.

Hmm, how unfortunate.

Pulse-8:
"Can I ask you for what purpose this is? I understand that you wish to play a song using iTunes but you don't want iTunes to display the song in the library."

Yeah, as mentioned by Aptmunich and cazabam above,
it's for when I listen to something I wouldn't want to have in my Library.
For instance, let's say an "explosion" sound effect.
Let's just say I don't want to suddenly hear that a week later when I'm doing work with iTunes on.

Up until now, like Aptmunich and cazabam, I basically opened such a file in QuickTime or something.

But I had hoped there was a better way.

remain said:

Up until now, like Aptmunich and cazabam, I basically opened such a file in QuickTime or something.

But I had hoped there was a better way.

Click to expand...

iTunes is primarily a library management application. It uses the same audio libraries as the QuickTime player. If you don't want a track in your library, the best way is to use a different application. QuickTime is the generic 'media' player whereas iTunes is the library management software, so using QuickTime is the 'official' way to do it.

Best thing is to right click, get info, and play it on the preview at the bottom. I also dont like that it auto adds to the library list but dont think there is a way around it.

biffyiffy said:

Best thing is to right click, get info, and play it on the preview at the bottom. I also dont like that it auto adds to the library list but dont think there is a way around it.

Click to expand...

Good one there biffyiffy! I have done that so many times I am surprised I did not remember to suggest that. Works like a charm.