Deleting backed-up music

For about a year, i unknowingly had the setting enabled in itunes to backup all my imported music to a specific destination (somewhere in my documents, my music, ect). Now that my computer is getting low on space, i want to remove the unnecessary music that itunes has backed up into the my documents directory, however, whenever i delete on of the files that itunes had backed up, it says that it cant play that song anymore because it cannot locate the file. I also don't wish to delete all the songs and start again, because Ive already gone through all the effort of adding lyrics, album artwork and details to all of my songs (there's about 10GB of them!).
My question is; how can I free space my removing the unnecessary files that itunes has backed up, without having to re-add many many songs?

I think you are confusing things a little. If iTunes complains it can't play after deleting then it is not a backup you are deleting. iTunes backs up to to CD or DVD.

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