[MichaelB43]

I did a search, and only came up with a resolution that seemed a little klugey to me. Is there an "easy" way to allow multiple users to share a single music library on the same Mac?

I made a nice mix of songs from my CD's, and my wife needed to use the Mac. I wanted her to listen to the mix while she worked. I opened iTunes, and nothing was there. I selected "share" on my library, but that seems to only work for others connected over the internet, or a LAN.

Any help here?

Thanks,
Mike

[Visnaut]

Here's what I did on my gf's laptop so that her and her brother can share the same music and playlist between their accounts. Make backups before you try all of this.

Log into your account and don't start up iTunes just yet. Go into the Library folder inside your home folder, and move the iTunes folder (where, i'm assuming all of your mp3's are) to the Shared folder, located in the Users folder. Make an alias of the iTunes folder and move it into your library folder, where it used to be. Make sure it is called 'iTunes' and not 'iTunes alias' or something like that.

Next, start up iTunes and in the importing preferences, change the location of where imported songs go, to its correct location now inside the iTunes folder inside Shared. Quit iTunes.

In the finder, Get Info (cmd-I) on the iTunes folder inside Shared. Under permissions, make sure every pop-up list is set to 'Read and Write' access. You may have to click the little lock icon beside your username to allow editing of this.

Log out, and log your wife in. Delete her iTunes folder inside her user folder and create an alias of the iTunes folder now located in Shared to her Library. Again, make sure it actually is called 'iTunes' and nothing else.

At this point everything should be ready to share music and playlists. Her iTunes should be able to view, play and edit your playlists, and vice versa.

Good luck.

I like cheese.

[CatOne]

Originally posted by MichaelB43:
I did a search, and only came up with a resolution that seemed a little klugey to me. Is there an "easy" way to allow multiple users to share a single music library on the same Mac?

I made a nice mix of songs from my CD's, and my wife needed to use the Mac. I wanted her to listen to the mix while she worked. I opened iTunes, and nothing was there. I selected "share" on my library, but that seems to only work for others connected over the internet, or a LAN.

Any help here?

Thanks,
Mike

In my case, I share the *songs*, but each user has their own library (meaning they can create their own playlists, song ratings, etc.).

You have to make the song "owners" library readable by the "other" user. You can do this by "chmod -R 750 Music" on their directory. Then go to the other user, and select to NOT copy files when added to library, and select to add songs, and then point it at the other user's music directory. Voila, all the songs will be seen and imported, and there you go.

The only downside is that when you add songs to the primary library, you have to re-import them to user #2's.

You *could* just create a shared library somewhere that's readable and writable and also has the Music DB... that's not the way I want to run mine though (because user #1 (me) is a lot more computer savvy than user #2 (the gf) so I want control over things ;-)

[Nonsuch]

Seems like someone asks this question every month or so. This is one area where iTunes could use some pretty significant improvement. I favor a system where you could launch iTunes and receive a notification if another user added tracks to the shared music directory. A pop-up list could show the tracks, and the user could cherry-pick the tracks he wanted added to his own library, or just choose "all" or "none." (Yes, I submitted that to Apple.)