Connecting a new ipod

Question

We recently purchased a new ipod nano for our daughter. She has downloaded songs on my computer under my itunes account that she wishes to load onto her ipod. How do I proceed?

Answer 1

Hi, not sure whether this will work and you may have tried it already. Also could do with more details to help you.
If you want to use the same itunes library with more than one ipod you can choose to manually sync them in itunes. This allows you to copy only the songs you want to each ipod. To do this, click on the ipod name in itunes when you connect it and choose the "manually sync" option towards the bottom of the screen. You don't have to manually sync both of them.
The problem with purchased songs is that they have to be authorized to play on a PC. When you purchase and download with your account the song can be played in your itunes but not in another itunes unless you enter your itunes account password when attempting to play the song. You can do that for up to 5 computers. iPods don't count as computers though.
If you also use an ipod and it is synced with your itunes you will be able to play anything downloaded into your itunes that is authorized to play with in your itunes on your ipod (you probably have to have purchased it with your account though). If you connect your daughters ipod, itunes will recognise that it is not synced with itunes and ask you if you want to do that. If you say yes her ipod will be completely over written with your itunes library at this point. So if she has music on it from somewhere else you should say no.
If you select no, you can choose to manually update her ipod which will allow her to create playlists or copy over only songs she wants on her ipod.
That will be ok for anything you have converted to mp3 from a CD. For purchased songs I would think that if there is already an ipod synced with itunes she will probably not be able to play them but I don't know for certain.
As an ipod doesn't count as one of the 5 machines that you are permitted to authorize to play a purchased song you probably won't be given the opportunity to enter your password to say it's ok to play those songs on her ipod. For them to just play anyway would defeat the object of the authorization.
However, if you do not already have an ipod synced with itunes then there should be no reason why the purchased songs wont play on your daughters ipod. She could sync her ipod automatically with your itunes but if she does she will have to put up with your music as well on her ipod!
The problem with doing it that way would be that if you later purchased your own ipod yours would then not be able to play songs you bought for yourself as your daughters ipod would be the one recognised as connected to that account. (I am not completely certain that purchased songs wont play on more than one ipod, so you could try it and see anyway if you do have your own).
Perhaps a better way to proceed in future would be to create a user id/account on your pc/mac for your daughter. This will create a separate itunes library for her. I believe that it would be possible for you to purchase songs for her using your itunes store account that would then be downloaded into her itunes library and which should therefore play on her ipod when it is synced with her itunes library. To do that you would log on to the itunes store from her itunes and enter your itunes store id to authorize payment for downloaded stuff. I believe there is an option to require password authorization every time a purchase is made or to allow purchases without a password so you would be able to control expenditure with the former!!
Of course if your daughter has her own pc you could do exactly the same with her itunes on her pc i.e. pay for songs for her with your itunes store account.
Hope that helps! Let me know how it goes!
John