ITunes and Album Artwork question on Mac with two users

Question

Hey everyone, I have what I hope is a pretty simple question. Right now, on my iMac, I have 2 user accounts, one for me and one for my wife. I wanted us to be able to share all of our music, so when I was setting up the computer, I put the iTunes Music Library in a /User/Shared/Music directory. Then, inside iTunes, for both users, I pointed to this new library. Everything here works great. When I add a song under 1 user, I just have to go to Add to Library under the other user and the songs are added. Works fine.
My main question is about the album artwork. I recently spent a lot of time under my user account going through and making sure I have all of the album artwork for every song we have in our library. I never thought about checking this on my wife's account, but when I did I realized that all of the stuff I added is not there. Anyway, I did some checking and found out that the album artwork is stored in each users Music directory. I did some reading on the web, and what I did was move my album artwork folder to the /Users/Shared/ directory, then created a symbolic link in my user directory to the shared folder. I did the same in my wife's account. I thought this would do the trick but it hasn't changed anything. Can anyone help me out here? Thanks so much for your time.

Answer 1

The artwork is stored in Music/iTunes/Artwork.
iTunes handles everything in that folder when iTunes adds it to the database.
This info is maintained in the iTunes library file in the iTunes folder.
iTunes will not do anything by copying or pointing to the artwork folder in your folder.
Unless you are both using the same iTunes library file, you will need to get your own artwork.
I put the iTunes Music Library
Do you mean the iTunes music folder?
Here's a way to do what you want.
Move your *iTunes folder* to the shared directory.
Open iTunes holding Option and select *Choose existing library*.
Select the iTunes library file in the Shared directory.
Everything should work fine.
Quit iTunes.
Move the *iTunes music folder* from /User/Shared/Music directory into the *iTunes folder* you moved into the Shared directory.
Start iTunes. Everything should work.
Quit iTunes.
Log into your wife's account.
Start iTunes holding the Option key, select *Choose existing library* and select the *iTunes library file* in the iTunes folder you moved into the Shared directory.
Everything should be there including all artwork.
Each user needs to quit iTunes before the other user can open it.
Shouldn't be a problem since you are using the same computer.