How Can I Get My Ratings and Playlists to Mirror Across Multiple Accounts?

Question

I'm sharing my music across two accounts on my Mac by placing my iTunes folder in the Shared folder, with an alias to that in each User's Music folder. It works fine, but the User of the other account would like the benefit of all my Playlists, and would especially like to have all My Ratings.
How can I get My Ratings and Playlists to mirror across multiple accounts? I would've thought simply importing the <iTunes Music Library.xml> file would do it, but since we're both using the same iTunes folder, we must already be using the same XML file, right?

Answer 1

The answer about where the ratings, etc. are stored is not an easy one, but the best I can figure is that it is a combination of the iTunes Music Library.xml, the iTunes Library file, and the com.apple.iTunes.plist. Apparently, the com.apple.iTunes.plist (in the under User/Library/Preferences) references the other two files. If you close iTunes, take the com.apple.iTunes.plist out of the user's Library/Preferences folder and then reopen iTunes, you will see that all the ratings, play counts, etc. (track information) will have disappeared. If you close iTunes, replace the com.apple.iTunes.plist, then reopen iTunes, the track information will be restored. The playlists, which are not part of the track information, seem to function independently of the com.apple.iTunes.plist, but if you share the whole iTunes folder across accounts, this should include the playlists. When I back up my iTunes library to another folder, I back up a copy of the current com.apple.iTunes.plist from my User/Library/Preference folder. I think that the way this works across multiple accounts is that the com.apple.iTunes.plist reads track information from the other files in the iTunes folder, because if you throw away the com.apple.iTunes.plist from one user account, it affects all the other user accounts sharing the same iTunes folder.