Okay. This is getting just short of absurd. I now into the 3rd day of trying to get my iTunes library under control. The original folder size that I started with was somewhere in the neighbor hood of 120 GB of stuff!!!! Which was in no way correct.
My actual music library was listed as 60 GB, but that included on average of 3 duplicates per song.
So, lessons: Keep your original source music in different folders somewhere, and don’t EVER point iTunes to the music folder that your original content is stored in because it will simply start mixing it’s own organization system with yours, and since the WORST thing that could happen is that someone might accidentally delete a song you really want, it errors on the side of caution and simply start duplicating things. UGH. Scary.
Anyway, I am now on to the 3rd copy and optimize attempt. Wish me luck…