Importing from a CD without adding to iTunes library

I don't think you can import a CD with iTunes and not have it added to your library.
But it has to be in our library in order to add it to your iPod.

You should be able to delete tracks from both your library and disk at the same time using iTunes if they are in the iTunes Music folder - which they will be if they were imported with iTunes.


If you need to collect dead tracks together, you can do it with playlists provided your library is not huge:

Using a playlist to collect dead tracks.
Create new regular playlist – Playlist1
Select whole library and drag to Playlist1
Create new Smart Playlist with the rule: Playlist is not Playlist1
Live updating checked – after you run it, uncheck live updating or you may not be able to delete tracks.
This playlist should contain all the dead tracks


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This works in Windows I guess it is the same for Macs, BTW you have posted to the Windows forum.

I don't know for certain that this works with CDs since I haven't tried it on a Windows system, but you can put tracks onto an iPod without having them go into the iTunes library:

Open iTunes.

Set the iPod to Manually manage music.

Drag music from the computer to the iPod icon in iTunes.

Note, though, that the tracks will not be compressed, so you'll have very large tracks on your iPod (the size of the track on CD). So unless you have a large-capacity iPod or don't put many tracks in it, you may want to take the extra step to import the tracks into iTunes so that they get compressed.

Message was edited by: Dave Sawyer

I use MaxCDRipper and have preferences set not to add to iTunes. It does most formats that itunes does (but not Apple Lossless which only iTunes can do which is why I don't use ALE but FLAC), plus some others.

Currently, the CD's I rip are automatically added to my library and it adds the extra step of me having to find the songs in iTunes and delete them because once the actual files are trashed, iTunes keeps them in the library with the little Exclamation point

Why not simply delete them with iTunes and the hard drive in one step instead of going to the Finder, finding the files, deleting them, going back to iTunes, finding the songs, then deleting them?

See this -> RIP to iPod
"Rips each enabled (checkmarked) CD track to iTunes and immediately copies it to iPod, deletes the file, and removes the track from the iTunes library, giving the appearance of seamless CD-to-iPod importing. You can also change your encoder on-the-fly and your Preferences-set encoder will be restored after the rip. Requires that iPod be set to "Manually manage music and videos". iPods set to sync are ignored."

Too bad you're not a PC. You could import them using WMP, and they'd stay out of itunes.

OK. Just saying, if you have a PC on your network, it might be faster.