How can I share itunes music with others who use this computer??

Question

I want to share my music with my granddaughter and she wants to share hers with me. We use the same computer but log in with different accounts. If the music is in the computer is seems there should be a way to share all the music.  Can we do that??

Answer 1

There are sharing abilities built into iTunes.  In the iTunes Help menu just type in "share."
I personally don't care for the way iTunes shares music.  I have taken a different route.  I use file sharing to share my Music folder with my wife.
From the Finder window right or control click on Music.
Select Get Info
At the bottom of Get Info click on the lock icon to unlock changes
Under Sharing click on the + to add access to another user.
Select you daughters id. and add her.
Give her Read Access.
Click on the Gear icon on the bottom and select "Apply to enclosed items."
Have you daughter do the same for you.  You will now have access to each others music.
There are several ways you can listen to each others music.
To listen to just one song I just use the Finder method.  Open Finder and click in the spotlight search field (upper right).  Type in some criteria (i.e. Artist, partial title, album name).  Files will appear in the finder window.  Select the icon view option.  You should see album artwork.  Move your mouse over the track you want to listen to and your should see a play button appear. Not sure which OSX versions support this (10.6 does).  Click on the play button.  If you don't see a play button you can play by selecting Get Info.  There is a play button in the preview section.  You can also play with Quick View.
To listen to a playlist you will need a multimedia player like VLC (google it if you don't have it).
From iTunes you can export your playlist from File > Library > Export Playlist... (.m3u works well)  Give your daughter read write access to the playlist file and from the Open With entry select VLC. (use the get info method)
Copy the playlist file to you daughters drop box in her public folder.  Have your daughter use the get info function to make sure her copy still points to VLC and not to iTunes.  If you open the playlist file with iTunes it may copy the tune files to her library. (don't want to end up with multiple copies of tunes on your Mac)
Double clicking on the playlist file will open VLC and begin playing.  There is a playlist button on VLC to view, sort and select tunes from the list.
Phew!  Hope that helped.
Dan
P.S.  Haven't tested this with copy protected stuff.