2 iPods, 2 Itunes, 2 Users, 1 Pool of songs?

[Peakoverload]

At the moment I have two profiles setup on my iMac, one for me and one for my wife. I have an iPod Nano and so I have an iTunes account and have all of my MP3's in a folder in my profile.

My wife now wants to get an iPod and will want to be able to have some of 'my' MP3's on her iPod and will want to set-up her own iTunes account.

How is it best to set this up?

I'm assuming I need to move my existing MP3's into a shared folder that she can access from her profile and then she can import them into iTunes and decide which she wants to synchronise with the iPod? I don't think this will be a problem for MP3's that I've ripped from my own CD's but what about ones that I've bought from iTunes, will she be able to play them on her iPod?

If two installations of iTunes are referencing the same pool of songs what happens when one copy of iTunes adds a new song, will this automatically appear in the other copy of iTunes or will it have to be manually added?

How do you go about moving all your songs to a shared folder without having to recreate all your playlists, ratings, album artwork etc again?

cheers

 

[baggss]

Since you each have your own account, why not simply move the music files to an external hard drive that you will both share. The drive would always mount on each desktop and be accessible. You can tell iTunes that the Library(s) is/are there and still let it organize the music for you if you desire. This is probably the easiest way to share all the music without having to worry about shared folders etc.

When you add a song file to the Hard Drive, each library would have to add it independently, but the file would be available to each user easily. For her to use your purchased music, she will simply have to authorize her account to use your music. This will require entering your iTunes username/password when required to grant her access to your music. She will then be able to load your music to her iPod.

 

[Peakoverload]

PERFECT! Many thanks for that, much appreciated.

 

[slashd0t]

Or better yet, if you don't want to buy an extrenal drive, just create a new folder and give both account Read and Write permissions to that folder and then point both of your libraries to that folder.