[HOWTO] - Share iTunes Libraries on the same computer

cfleck

cfleck

tired
I've had talks with several people about how to set up your mac so that you and another user on your computer can use the same library for itunes. note, this is typically for one person and his/her significant other. this is how i did it and it works beautifully... at least for me

you need to make sure one user on the computer has all the music in his/her itunes library. for the sake of this 'tutorial', we'll assume that user is you.

oh, and i highly suggest you make an extra copy of your iTunes folder before you start, just in case.

1 - first i opened up the netinfo manage and made a new group. basically i duplicated the admin group and changed the title to 'music' and the gid to '99'. you can make these whatever you want, so long as they are not taken by any other groups on your mac.

2 - make sure you and the other user(s) are members of this group

3 - highlight your 'Music' folder, right click it, and hit 'get info'

4 - under the ownership & permissions heading hit the arrow to expand the details of such. set the 'group' to 'music' (or whatever you chose) and access to 'read & write'.

5 - hit apply to enclosed items.

6 - now, you need each other user to log into his/her account and delete their iTunes folder in their music folder. make a new folder alias, and alias it to your iTunes folder.

7 - you're done. their music is now your music. and vice versa. be warned, and changes they make, playlists, adding/deleting songs are all done to the "master" copy. yours. if your s.o. deletes your favorite audiobook from 'her' library, its gone from yours too. be careful!
 
Thanks for that cfleck - I believe I was one of the people you were discussing this with - I've certainly been looking at this on and off for a while, and tried various suggested scripting fixes, and have also been mucking about with permissions of folders - I think I achieved it in the end by creating several custom folders and aliases, with full access for the other users all the way down the directory path to my iTunes library - not the safest or most elegant solution, but this seems pretty simple and a lot cleaner! Good work!
 
dont know, as i set this up well before the latest version, but just got around to posting this.
 
I did note on the new version that when I switched into my grirlfriend's account and launched iTunes (when I already had it running under my account) it no longer says "another user is using this application, please ask them to quit this application before you can use it" but just launches, but can't remember whether it allows her to use my library, and whether that would be a result of the upgrade or one of the numerous fixes I tried.
Its all academic, I can't get her to use iTunes anyway, should never have bought that darned stereo...
 
Does anyone know if setting up iTunes like this would change your settings for the iTunes Music Store? Where are those files kept anyway? It would be nice to share the same aliased music folder but still have seperate credit card accounts on iTMS.

Grover
 
No I shouldn't think it would change the store settings, they won't be stored in the itunes library, but in the itunes application support or preferences in your library.
I had a different system to this. I moved the itunes music folder to shared, and then set my (and every other account's) itunes music folder location to that place. The benefit of that is the music library file does not move, so then you have can share the music, but not the playlists etc. (actually that might be the case with you method?). The other benefit is that you don't have to fiddle with Netinfo, which I was not savvy with I did this workaround. I am now, in case anyone wants to know how to set up a secure guest for sharing on a samba network drop me an email...
 
Or you could just change the location of your iTunes music folder, and have all users put in in /Users/Shared/
 
I brought this up in this same forum a long time ago. Since iTunes allowed sharing libraries on the same net, I wondered why I couldn't share libraries on the same computer. My G4 has 4 user accounts, and I knew there was some duplication in our iTunes libraries.

The answer to my question of why library sharing didn't work on the same computer was that in order to share your library, you had to be logged in with iTunes running. Since only one person could be logged in at a time, there was no way to share.

When fast user switching came out, we could all be logged in at once, but it would still only allow one person at a time to run iTunes.

Now, with the latest version of iTunes, we can all be running iTunes at the same time, and iTunes library sharing works great between all of the accounts!

Of course it only works as long as everyone leaves iTunes running, but that's not a big deal.

-tony
 
I've just bought a new iBook, whcih both my wife & I will use. We'll also both be using our iMac from now on. I've come up with the following solution:

Copy the "Music" folder from the Admin account to the Shared directory under "Users". Update the permissions on the Shared directory, ensuring that "apply to enclosed items" is selected. Then simply create an alias to the Music directory, and copy it back to your user account (make sure it's simply called "Music"). Then login to the other user account, delete the existing music folder, and copy the alias from the shared directory, again making sure to call it "Music". Hey presto, shared iTunes library.

The beauty of this is that it works for photos (just do the same for the "Pictures" directory), and if you invest in a good sync product like Folders Synchronization ($40), you can keep the iTunes library up-to-date across all your Apples.

I just received the iBook this week, previously the iMac was my wife's & I used a PC, so I'm not a Mac expert or anything, and if I can set this up, I think your average mac user could too.

PS I'm finally getting rid of the PC now that the mac can do everything it could (& more) without running Virtual PC... Yaay!
 
scruffy said:
Or you could just change the location of your iTunes music folder, and have all users put in in /Users/Shared/
Click to expand...

Scruffy, that's what I did. Only issue is that same thing applies to adding an deleting music that was mentioned above.
 
tony said:
I brought this up in this same forum a long time ago. ....When fast user switching came out,...Of course it only works as long as everyone leaves iTunes running, but that's not a big deal.
Click to expand...

Thats exactly what I do, added advantage, open airport and you can zip iTunes between machines through the air WITHOUT the need to grant OSX login access to your "base" iTunes library.
 
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