Can anyone tell me if I have got this right? I have been transferring a lot of my CD's onto itunes in MP3 format. All the music appears in the "music" tab and I then select the music I want and drag and drop them into a named playlist I have created. Am I right in thinking that these playlists rely on the original download still existing in the general music tab? The reason I ask is that I thought the music tab was getting rather large so thought I would delete quite a bit of stuff from there to tidy things up. However, when I deleted them from the music tab the same tracks in my playlists disappeared as well - fortunately I was able to restore everything from the recycle bin. Any assistance appreciated - hope this is as clear as mud?

Playlists are effectively just a list of links to songs in your library, so deleting them from your library or computer will result in them being deleted from your playlists.

Thanks for that info Examinus, I thought that must be the case. It does get a bit messy in the library tab though with hundreds of songs listed. P.S whats the best compromise MP3 bit rate re: quality versus file size?

The usual bit rate is 128kbps. Below that you'll probably start to notice a reduction in quality.