05-15-2006, 09:31 AM

Hello,

Our iMac has 4 user accounts on it, one for each family member. We all have our own iTunes accounts as well.

If I set our iTunes preference to "Share Library" how can we listen to each others' iTunes songs? Is this possible, or is sharing only for sharing over a network?

Thanks!

05-16-2006, 03:17 AM

I think the sharing option only shares between computers, not one computer with multiple accounts. What you could try doing is moving all the iTunes Music Libraries into one folder which all accounts can access and then in the iTunes preferences setting where the library is.

If you have any purchased music, you'd need to sign in using the account that bought them. Now my concern there is if you sign in, and essentially authenticate in each of those accounts, you'll be using up all your authorisations on one computer, if you know what I mean. I am in the same situation, only with 2 accounts.

05-16-2006, 05:28 PM

Yes, checking the "share iTunes" option lets users on the same machine share their libraries (I do this now on both an iMac and an iBook). The "authentication" for iTunes purchased songs only kicks in if you want to physically copy the song onto different machines.

HOWEVER, iTunes MUST be running in each user ID for each user wanting to share their library -- that is, "Mom" must be logged on and running iTunes for "Son" to see her library and vice versa.

Same seems to be true for file sharing, generally (unless you copy everything into the "Public" folder).

I think this is a shortcoming of OSX in that you cannot access files on your network (different or same computer) unless everyone stays logged on (as a WinXP switcher, this is frustrating -- the network is already secured so why not let me have access to folders on machines without logging on).

05-18-2006, 07:26 AM

Originally Posted by Daddy Elmis

Yes, checking the "share iTunes" option lets users on the same machine share their libraries (I do this now on both an iMac and an iBook). The "authentication" for iTunes purchased songs only kicks in if you want to physically copy the song onto different machines.

I was not aware of that, sorry for the bad info. I guess it makes sense that iTunes must be running on the other account though for the music to be shared.

So how does iTunes know that you are playing music from the same machine and not over a network? When I first went to play music my wife had bought on iTunes, on my own machine via her iTunes sharing it, I had to authenticate in order to play those. I would have thought that was the same with sharing through accounts....