[selowitch]

Is it any easier to share iTunes music among users under Tiger?

[OptimusG4]

Originally Posted by selowitch

Is it any easier to share iTunes music among users under Tiger?

What do you mean? With it being 4.7.1, I would imagine it's the same as in Panther.

[selowitch]

You answered your own question. Obviously, if there were a change in this issue, it would have to be at the OS level and not at the application level.

[porieux]

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[selowitch]

If your iTunes library exists under one user account, if you're logged in as another, you can't access the music. There's no easy way to designate multiuser permissions.

[porieux]

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[selowitch]

That is indeed fairly easy (okay, I'd prefer a checkbox in iTunes, but I'll take it). I'll try it.

[porieux]

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[selowitch]

Originally Posted by porieux

Move to a shared directory or basically outside anyone's HOME directory and make aliases of the itunes folder in everyone's Music directory. Easy.

I've tried other hints like this one. They don't work, and neither does this one.

[selowitch]

Originally Posted by porieux

It works I've done it. You could even do this with multiple computers on a network, though that would be a bit slow.

No, it doesn't work.
I've moved my music to Users --> Shared --> iTunes and created aliases to that directory in each person's Music folder, but nothing happens.

[porieux]

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[selowitch]

Originally Posted by porieux

Well, you are doing something wrong.

Distinctly possible. But what?

[porieux]

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[OptimusG4]

Or, move the whole music library to the shared folder. Then, in the Advanced section of iTunes prefereneces, you can select the folder where the music is located. You won't need to create aliases for this.

[DigitalEl]

I simply have my iTunes folder in my main account, as would be expected, but I have an alias of that folder in the Shared directory. In my wife's account, I have her iTunes music folder pointed to that Shared directory. It's been working fine this way for quite some time, through Panther and into Tiger. We have full access to all our music from either account.

[selowitch]

Originally Posted by DigitalEl

I simply have my iTunes folder in my main account, as would be expected, but I have an alias of that folder in the Shared directory. In my wife's account, I have her iTunes music folder pointed to that Shared directory. It's been working fine this way for quite some time, through Panther and into Tiger. We have full access to all our music from either account.

OK, will try it.

Thanks, everybody. I'm sure this will work eventually. Good responses!

[bbales]

I have our music in the shared folder. BUT -- I discovered last week while backing things up in prep. for Tiger, that somehow, when my daughter puts music in, while logged in on her account, music ends up in HER music folder and not the shared one. There was, in fact, 2 gigs of music in there for some reason, including some duplicates and some not.

I weeded out a lot of the duplicates, and now, of course, she's having to go back in and re-find her music. I'm not sure why this happened, but it's a pain. And I'm sure it's not working the way it's supposed to.

[selowitch]

Originally Posted by bbales

And I'm sure it's not working the way it's supposed to.

<sarcasm>Oh, but didn't you know? Setting up multiuser music sharing in iTunes is so easy.</sarcasm>

It irritates me that questions about this and other topics posted here are greeted with eyerolls and condescension (not you, bbales). Yet frequently, if you dig beneath the surface, things are not so simple in the real world. This happens every now and then on MacNN, and it's got to stop.

Let this be a lesson to those of you who think you know everything and that everyone else is stupid.

[porieux]

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[selowitch]

Originally Posted by porieux

Actually, it is dead simple.

I'm overjoyed that it works for you. Really I am.

Well, clearly there's no need for you to participate in this thread, because you're obviously so very much smarter than the rest of us (personally, I happen to be preparing for my Apple Certified Technician exam — but hey, what do I know? I'm just a dumbass, right?).

I can do a lot more difficult and mentally challenging things than this (or so I thought). But surely you can concede that this process is far from the smoothly intuitive experience that we all prize so highly in many Apple products. I think a simple menu labeled "Allow the following users access to my Music:" would be nice, no?

Originally Posted by porieux

Don't have iTunes running while replacing the directory with the alias.

This could be the key issue in my case. I'll check it out.

[porieux]

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[selowitch]

Originally Posted by porieux

i'm not sure what the attitude is about

Heck if I know. Ask my psychiatrist. :-) Seriously, though — remarks like "works for me" and "it's simple" are not usually considered to be very helpful around here. That's what I was responding to.

Originally Posted by porieux

but I've only tried to help you here.

Well, I appreciate that.

[porieux]

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[selowitch]

Originally Posted by porieux

Well 'works for me' is extremely helpful, because it lets you know that what you want to do is indeed possible. And telling you that it's simple is just an observation.

True, at least in some cases. You seem to deserve the benefit of the doubt.

Originally Posted by porieux

Hopefully you got it working.

It did finally work, but not before I reimported my entire music library and reset the permissions so that all could read/write to the entire directory. It was a pain, and I imagine typical users would give up before I did.

Thanks.