iTunes Creates a new .tmp file every time a song is played - 26GB worth

Something else on your system is locking the iTunes library.xml file.

I saw this behaviour when I installed the lastfm plug-in for iTunes. DO you have any iTunes plug-ins installed?

Katrina,
I appreciate your answers - they are almost always relevant. Thanks for your dedication. My question is related to this thread, so rather than starting a new one, I am appending this one.

I noticed that there were 4 tmp files created in my iTunes folder (default location) and they all were created on the same date within a minute or two of each other. I don't have any idea what precipitated this event (3/1/08).

Since we have no plug-ins, I don't think that is the reason.

First, I want to know if I can delete them.

Secondly, what sort of things can trigger the creation of one? What if a person were to delete purchased songs from the library, and iTunes offers to copy them back and you decline (I kept them in the folder, just took them off the library). Is this a way that iTunes keeps track of your purchases and where they are residing?

CaliforniaRN,
Thanks for the compliment! It's a nice change from people posting that I sound like a broken record~

iTunes updates the playcount in the iTunes Music Library.xml file at the end of each song that is played.

From what I see in Windows Explorer, it creates a temp file named IT.tmp and then when it finishes its playcount update in IT.tmp, it deletes the current XML file and renames the temp file to iTunes Music Library.xml. This is a reverse-engineering guess.

Also, I have some plug-ins always running that create files named temp and then get deleted....which is different than a normal iTunes installation. The plugin might be trying to use the XML file at the same iTUnes tries, and since there is a lock on the file, iTunes can't do it's delete/rename thing.

If your case, if you are getting tmp files without using plugins, I suspect security software was doing a scan and a similar thing happened.

Yes, you can delete those .tmp files. Here is an article for Macs, but it applies to Windows as well. I have deleted those tmp files after closing iTunes, with no harm to my iTunes setup.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93043

As far as I can tell, deleting a purchased file from your iTunes library only changes the iTunes Lubrary.itl file, not the xml file.

Katrina,
I did a bit of snooping in my Music folder - by searching for files modified on the same date as the temp files, I came up with 3 or 4 albums added to my library, and each temp file created corresponds to one of those albums.

Since this has not happened since I think it was just a glitch.

And, when I look at the file size of those temp files, they increase with new versions of the temp file, but the itl file now is nearly 1000k larger than the temps. Who knows.

Sometimes when I add a bunch of files at once, iTunes just balks, and, sometimes when I try to add album art, the same thing. I recall that happening on that day, but cannot be more specific. Seeing the track names made the light come on!