Sharing an iTunes library - best practices/howto? (iDrive?)

I would like to know how others have solved this issue:
Scenario:
* I have an iMac and a macbookpro (MBP). My wife uses the iMac and syncs her iPhone there. I use the MBP and sync my iPhone against the MBP. I usually sync my phone at the office (not on my home network).
* I listen to the iTunes library on the MBP at work.
* It is that listening to the iTunes library and syncing at work that prevents a simple network share of an iTunes library on the home network.
_Finally to the question_: How do we share an iTunes library that we both can listen to at any time and sync our phones against.
_My answer (not working too well)_:
* I put all our music (25GB) on mobileMe in an iDisk and pointed iTunes at the iDisk on each mac. I setup the iDisk to sync a local copy of the iDisk on each mac.
* I am starting to see sync errors and worry that changes to the iTunes library may get lost if changes are made on both the iMac and MBP and then sync, as the sync utility must pick a version of the file, one version will get lost
- mattb

Trevnew wrote:
when looked in preferences the old location was still there, eventually changed in preferences
Trev,
changing iTunes media folder location via preferences > advanced tells iTunes where to put new additions to your library, not where the current content is.
also, with your library now on the NAS, you must make sure the NAS is mounted on your desktop before launching iTunes.
... still showed an issue with the file locations and the exclamation marks.
you may have done something wrong initially (during re-locating your library to the NAS) because the exclamation marks usually appear when media files were moved using the finder and iTunes lost track of their location.
you might be able to use this script:
iTunes Track CPR v1.3
This script attempts to locate the files of so-called "dead tracks"--iTunes tracks designated with (!)--that you assume are not actually missing but are still located in the iTunes Music folder in their "iTunes File Order" (Music -> Artist -> Album -> file.xxx)."

Similar Messages

Who is Sharing my iTunes Library?

I was wondering if there's a way to find out who is sharing my iTunes library on a local network.

You can make your copy of iTunes ignore other shared libraries on your network by unticking the checkbox next to Shared Libraries under the Edit > Preferences... > General tab.
Of more concern might be the network secutity implications if your machine is sharing a network with unknown others.
tt2

Sharing an iTunes Library across multiple user account and a network.

Sharing an iTunes Music Library across multiple user accounts.
Hello Everybody!
Firstly, this was designed to be run in Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. It will not work with earlier versions of Mac OS X! Sorry.
Here's a handy tip for keeping your hard drive neat and tidy, it also saves space, what in effect will be done is an iTunes music library will be shared amongst multiple users on the same machine. There are advantages and disadvantages to using this method.
• Firstly I think it might be worthwhile to state the advantages and disadvantages to using this approach.
The advantages include:
- Space will be saved, as no duplicate files will occur.
- The administrator will be able to have complete control over the content of the iTunes library, this may be useful for restricting the content of the Library; particularly for example if computer is being used at and education institution, business or any other sort of institution where things such as explicit content would be less favorable.
- The machine will not be slowed by the fact that every user has lots of files.
The disadvantages to this system include.
- The fact that the account storing the music will have to be logged in, and iTunes will have to be active in that account.
- If the account housing the music is not active then nobody can use the iTunes library.
- There is a certain degree of risk present when an administrator account must be continually active.
- Fast User Switching must be enabled.
Overview:
A central account controls all music on the machine/network, this is achieved by storing iTunes files in a public location as opposed to in the user's directory. In effect the system will give all users across the machine/network access to the same music/files without the possibility of files 'doubling up' because two different users like the same types of music. This approach saves valuable disk space in this regard and may therefore prove to be useful in some situations.
This is a hearty process to undertake, so only follow this tutorial if you're willing to go all the way to the end of it.
Process:
Step 1:
Firstly, we need to organize the host library, I tidied mine up, removing excess playlists, random files, things like that. this will make thing a bit easier in the later stages of this process.
Once the library is tidied up, move the entire "iTunes" folder from your Home directory to the "//localhost" directory (The Macintosh HD) and ensure that files are on the same level as the "Applications", "Users", "Library" and "System" directories; this will ensure that the files in the library are available to all users on the machine (this also works for networks)
Optionally you can set the ownership of the folder to the 'administrator' account (the user who will be hosting the library.), you may also like to set the permissions of 'you can' to "Read & Write" (assuming that you are doing this through the user who will host the library); secondly you should set the "Owner" to the administrator who will be hosting the library and set their "access" to "Read & Write" (this will ensure that the administrator has full access to the folder). The final part of this step involves setting access for the "Others" tab to "Read Only" this will ensure that the other users can view but not modify the contents on the folder.
Overview:
So far we have done the following steps:
1. Organized the host library.
2. Placed the iTunes directory into a 'public' directory so that other users may use it. (this step is essential if you plan on sharing the library across multiple accounts on the same machine. NOTE: this step is only necessary if you are wanting to share you library across multiple accounts on the same machine, if you simply want to share the music across a network, use the iTunes sharing facility.
3. set ownership and permissions for the iTunes music folder.
Step 2:
Currently the administrator is the only user who can use this library, however we will address this soon. In this step we will enable iTunes music sharing in the administrator's account, this will enable other users to access the files in the library.
If you are not logged in as the administrator, do so; secondly, open iTunes and select "Preferences" from the "iTunes" menu, now click the "Sharing" tab, if "share my library on my local network" is not checked, the radio buttons below this will now become active, you may choose to share the entire libraries contents, or share only selected content.
Sharing only selected content may be useful if their is explicit content in the library and minors use the network or machine that the library is connected to.
If you have selected "share entire library" go to Step 3, if you have selected share "share selected playlists" read on.
After clicking "share selected playlists" you must then select the playlists that you intend to share across your accounts and network. Once you have finished selecting the playlists, click "OK" to save the settings.
Overview:
In this step we:
1. Enabled iTunes sharing in the administrator's account, now, users on the local network may access the iTunes library, however, users on the same machine may not.
Step 3:
Now we will enable users on the same machine to access the library on the machine. This is achieved by logging in as each user, opening iTunes, opening iTunes preferences, and clicking "look for shared music". now all users on the machine may also access the library that the administrator controls.
This in effect will mean that the user will not need to use their user library, it will be provided to them via a pseudo network connection.
As a secondary measure, I have chosen to write a generic login script that will move any content from the user's "Music/iTunes/iTunes Music" directory to the trash and then empties the user's trash.
This is done through the use of an Automator Application: this application does the following actions.
1. Uses the "Finder" action "Get Specified Finder Items"
1a. The user's "~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music" folder
2. Uses the "Finder" action "Get Folder Contents"
3. Uses the "Finder" action "Move to Trash"
4. Uses the "Automator" action "Run AppleScript"
4a. with the following:
on run {input, parameters}
tell application "Finder"
empty trash
end tell
return input
end run
IMPORTANT: Once the script is adapted to the user account it must be set as a login item. in order to keep the script out of the way i have placed it in the user's "Library" directory, in "Application Support" under "iTunes".
Overview:
Here we:
1. Enabled iTunes sharing in the user accounts on the host machine, in effect allowing all users of the machine to view a single iTunes library.
2. (Optional) I have created a login application that will remove any content that has been added to user iTunes libraries, this in effect stops other users of the machine from adding music and files to iTunes.
Step 4:
If it is not already enabled, open system preferences and enable Fast User Switching in Accounts Options.
Summary:
We have shared a single iTunes library across multiple user account, while still allowing for network sharing. This method is designed to save space on machines, particularly those with smaller hard drives.
I hope that this hint proves to be helpful and I hope everybody will give me feedback on my process.
regards,
Pete.
iBook G4; 60GB Hard Drive, 512MB RAM, Airport Extreme Mac OS X (10.4.6) iWork & iLife '06, Adobe CS2, Final Cut Pro. Anything and Everything!!!

how to share music between different accounts on a single computer

How to move Mobile Applications folder while sharing an Itunes library

For reasons that would be long and hard to explain, I decided some times ago to open a second user on my Book Pro dedicated to my music collection. The collection required to be stored on an external HDD, so the second user's Itunes folder links to a folder where all music is stored, and I put it with all library files (xml etc) in the Shared folder. Now I have decided to let the primary and mostly used user to share the same music of the secondary one. I easily succeeded in doing this, just simply opening the primary ITunes and ask it to link to the Itunes folder under the Shared folder. I have got my entire library also from the primary user, with covers and so on.
The trouble is that I use to manage an Iphone with the primary ITunes, and since I have not moved the Mobile Application folder (and what more?) into the shared ITunes folder, I cannot see anymore all data and applications into my IPhone section under ITunes, and I do not want to run experiments, doing a sync and just running the risk to lose all. How can I share the same ITunes library between two users, but to allow one of those still to see the IPhone data that was originally managed only from her ITunes, that now addresses to the ITunes folder under Shared folder that addresses to a HDD?.....

Still misspeaking. Further use reveals that while the users iTunes use the shared file, when the phones add new apps their iTunes recreates its iTunes Media directory in the users home folder. This time I can exit iTunes, move the apps to the shared Mobile Applications, delete and empty trash the original apps/ and folder, then the users iTunes will find the app in the shared folder when it restarts. Clearly not very tidy...

Multiple users sharing one itunes library

i have multiple users on my mac, but i'd like us all to be able to access the same itunes library. when i go to itunes prefs on one of the other users accounts and redirect their music library to my folder, it says it is doing it, but itunes still goes to their own music folder instead of mine. i can share my library with the sharing pref, but while they can now listen to my music, they still can't use it in imovie. is there any easy way around this problem??
thanks for your help.

I wrote a simple shell script that executes each time a user logs in (well, actually, each time I log in, coz' it's not really applicable to other users). It syncs my work and home addressbooks and iCal calendars to one another.
I named it "sync". Then I read somewhere that if you wanted to make it double-clickable (to launch it from the Finder), I appended a ".command" filename extension (so it's now named "sync.command"). I also did a chmod 755 to that file so that it had execute privileges. Depending on whether you give each user their own copy of this thing, or keep a single copy in, say, the /Users/Shared directory, you may have to play around with chmod. Whatever, just so long as the user that has just logged in has execute permissions to the file, and to the entire path to the file, you should be good.
Then, in SysPrefs > Accounts > Login Items, I added that "sync.command" file to the list. So, really the only difference is I'm not wrapping mine inside an Automator script like you are.
I had tried adding it to ~/Library/LaunchAgents and make a launchd plist for it, that would kick it off at login. But I didn't get that to work. Don't know why. But just adding the double-clickable executable unix script to the Login Items list did the trick. Whether the plist has to hang out there with it, I don't know. I still have it there, though, in case I ever get motivated to figure out what's wrong with my launchd plist file. So, if just adding it to the Login Items list doesn't do it for you, you could try making a (functional?) launchd plist for it and plopping them both in ~/Library/LaunchAgents, too. That's how I am now, and, like I said, it launches at user login as that user's process (not as a root process like the above referenced article said how login hooks worked -- although, you may want it to run as root since you want this to work with multiple users...in which case, you might want to listen to Cole and not me...).

Sharing one iTunes library across multiple accounts on the same Mac

Hello, I've poked around at some of the posts dealing with sharing one iTunes music library across multiple accounts on the same Mac but it seems like this can only be done if the libary is moved to a shared folder. I realize this can be done but I was trying to share it the way it is described in a post on Apple support (See link below.). That post seemed to imply that you don't have to move the library from its original location (owned by account A, e.g.), rather just make a couple preference changes in the accounts, use fast user switching and voila. That doesn't seem to work. So my question is this: Is the only way to share one iTunes music library across multiple accounts on the same Mac to move it to a shared folder? I'm running 10.4.8 on an Intel iMac. Thanks in advance!
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93195

After reading this and several other related threads, I am becoming thoroughly confused about all of this. I have a situation similar to the one that pokerpal described in the post dated January 7 at 8:06 pm, except that the music files on my system are located on an external hard drive. Everything else is pretty much the same though - I am the admin user (and the main iTunes user and maintainer) and my girlfriend is a standard user who has no music in her own iTunes library. She can see and listen to and make playlists from and sync her iPod with the music in this library from her account, and I can do the same thing, independent of her, from my account. And if I make a change to information within a song, she doesn't see it, and vice versa, and I understand that. What I don't understand is why when I add a song or an album to the music files by importing a CD or downloading something from the iTunes Music Store, she has no way of knowing that unless I tell her, and then she can add it to her library by using the "Add to Library" function. Is there no way of automatically updating her library files to add the new song(s)? We have almost 15,000 songs and videos in that library, and I don't even want to think about what might have to happen if the answer to my question is "no." Interestingly enough, if I put an update to a Word document in the same exact location (on the hard drive), we can update that and pass it back and forth all day - why is that such a difficult task for iTunes to accomplish?
Sorry I went on so long, but this has been building up for some time, and none of the solutions I've read about here have really been of any help, so I'm a bit frustrated and, as I said at the beginning, confused.
iMac G5, MacBook Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Sharing one iTunes Library with Fast User Switching

Last year, I started using one MacBook Pro for Office use and Personal Home use, by creating two user accounts on it, and enabling Fast User Switching. I did this when I gave up using two separate desktops macs.
Now I have two rather similar music libraries, taking up too much hard drive space. Once I enabled Music Sharing in my Office iTunes Library, I realized that I could gain access to that Office Music Library when I am on my Personal Home User account. Since my Library on my Office account is the most complete, can I eliminate the iTunes Library on my Personal Home User account, to save hard drive space?
If so, how should I do this?
MBPro17, Pbk17 G4 1.67, Pbk G4 12 1.5, iMac G4, various G4&G5's Mac OS X (10.4.8) Airport Extreme & Express

Glen
Since my Library on my Office account is the most
complete, can I eliminate the iTunes Library on my
Personal Home User account, to save hard drive
space?
Yes.
If so, how should I do this?
Move the iTunes folder in Home/Music on the Personal
Home User Account to the desktop.
Launch iTunes. Unable to locate a library file, it
will create a new one, empty one in a new iTunes
folder at Home/Music.
Connect to your shared library as usual. If
everything is working as expected, trash the iTunes
folder on your desktop.
Regards
TD
My iTunes was created under an admin. user profile that I would like to delete. I created a second profile also with admin privlages but I want to delete the first because I messed up the shortname on the profile. So, if I delete this first profile, will I lose all of my music? Will I lose access to the music?

Sharing an iTunes Library over WAN?

Sorry if this question has been asked before but my searching of the forum here has only seemed to turn up questions and anwswers on sharing over a local network. Here is my question.
Is it possible to share an iTunes library over the internet? And if so, how? If it isn't I'd like to know so I can stop trying to track down how to do this.
I have a Titanium G4 at home running iTunes 6.01 using a cable modem and router. The router firewall has been setup with the proper ports for iTunes and FTP (FTP works fine). My work computer is a G5 running iTunes 6.01 connected via a DSL modem/router.
I have no other issues connecting to my home computer from work, but I can't see my shared music at home on my work computer.
Thanks for any info.

Issue solved. Here is what I did. I setup my Mac at home so I could connect at work. Inside the iTunes library on my work Mac I created an alias to the iTunes Music folder on my home Mac. Since my library at home and work are exactly the same iTunes on my work Mac sees a local library file but is streaming the music over WAN from my Mac at home.
The are some stops and starts as the connection is over WAN, but it's pretty smooth. Do not know what will happen if I need to add or subtract from the library on either Mac.
Just bringing this to the front in case anyone is interested in trying it themselves.

Network sharing of iTunes library issue

Hello,
I've searched for a similar problem, but did not find one.
I have a main computer where I keep all of my MP3's on an external drive. I've sucessfully shared the library to the second computer - all of the playlists show up complete with artwork. The problem is, when I try to play or download to an iPod on the 2nd machine, I get an error message on the second computer the "the original files can't be located - would you like to locate them? Well, yes, I would, but not for 500+ albums!
I've got the 2nd machine pointed at the main folder of the drive where the music folders are located in preferences. I can individually re-locate the files on the 2nd machine and fix it this way, but is there a global way to point the 2nd machine at the correct location of ALL of the folders on the external drive connected to the main machine?
Both machines are running iTunes 7.4.3.1
Thanks!

This issue of sharing music among many different Macs on one network seems to be much harder than it should be. As mentioned above it would be ideal to be able to walk up to any Mac I own in my home (all of which are registered with Apple to play my AAC files) and listen to any song I want from a common library of songs on an external drive (and from any user account on each of those Macs). Also, if the fancy strikes me to hop onto iTunes and buy a song I should be able to do so from ANY computer and have the song automatically be placed into that external library AND show up on EVERY iTunes library of every user on every Mac in my home. This is where it gets sticky - I have been able to point each iTunes to the iTunes Music folder on the external drive (either directly pointing it to the folder or using an alias as mentioned above) but there is no way that I have found to AUTOMATICALLY have a new song I have purchased show up on all Macs. What I need to do is manually go to each iTunes (on each Mac and on each user account!) and add that purchased song to the iTunes library of that Mac. Confusing, right?? Gets worse if you purchase songs on more than one Mac in your home (I have 3). Apple really should make this entire process seamless -- especially if they want to have us buying media (songs, movies, TV shows, etc...) from them to play wherever and whenever we want on our Apple products (iPods, iPhones, AppleTVs, AppleToilets, etc...). Would seem straightforward to have iTunes check a file to see if a new file has been added to the main library on the external drive and if so, add that file to that particular iTunes library. Just some of my thoughts.....

Sharing an iTunes library with another user

My wife and I both got iPad2's recently. I would like to add some of my photos from iphoto and some of my music from iTunes to her iPad.
I have one iTunes account. I have built it over the years and it recognizes my iPhone and my iPad.
Can she sync content (photos, music, movies) from my iTunes account on to her iPad?
I am really confused about how iTunes deals with multiple users on the same iTunes library.
Hopefully this is enough information for someone to give me an iTunes 101 lesson on multiple users (with different Apple ID's) and sharing of one iTunes library, and syncing photos, movies, etc.... with each user's devices.
Both my wife and I are in the cloud, but we really haven't done anything for her to access content in the cloud. I am fully set up for the cloud with my iMac, iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV2.
Appreciate any help offered or references to help me understand the link between one iTunes library and multiple users.

how to share music between different accounts on a single computer

Sharing an iTunes library between multiple accounts on one machine

I have tried to set up a shared library so that all users on my computer can access the same music. I have tried moving my iTunes folder to the HD under Users, Shared and setting the filepath in the Preferences, Advanced, General to point to that location. It works fine with the main admin account but other users have an empty library despite their paths being altered also.
Any advice would be much appreciated.

It's a misunderstanding that setting the 'iTunes Music folder location' tells iTunes to look at that location.
The iTunes Music folder location is the location where your next imported CD is stored. The song locations however are stored inside the 'iTunes Library' file which is in ./Users/YourUsername/Music/iTunes.
Moving the music folder to another location without 'telling' iTunes normally will lead to loss of links. You will see exclamation marks before the song name, telling that iTunes can't find the files.
Recent versions of iTunes can track a moved folder, when it's moved on the same disk.
The other users will not see this music. You have to copy the 'iTunes Library' file and put it in the iTunes folder of the other user(s).
--edit
Instead of copying the 'iTunes Library' file, you can add the entire music folder to each users library.
This will enable every user to apply their own rating (which is not stored in the song file, but in the 'iTunes Library' file).
--end of edit
They will then have full access to the library, which means, every user can add and delete music from the shared library.
The methods of sharing music are described here:
iTunes: How to share music between different accounts on a single computer
Hope this helps.
M
Message was edited by: macmenno

Sharing an iTunes library across multiple computers

I tried Home Share but it did not do what i expected. In addition to doing Home Share, the files need to be copied to each computer apparently.
Is it permitted to have the iTunes Library be located on a shared disc (such as one attached to an AirPort Express)? So that one copy of the library would be used by all copies of iTunes running in the house?
I am confused because different products seem to work differently. If I set up my iMac and my Mac Book with Home Share, each of htem needs a copy of the library in its own disk space. But if I set up Apple TV to use Home Share, it plays my videos from the hard drive of my iMac. Yes both describe Home Share as the same concept.
So far it appears that MacBook and iMac do not share libraries in the sense of using a single copy on disk.
What about iPhone and iPad? Do they read the library from the home sharing computer or do the media files need to be downloaded ahead of time to the iOS device?
What am I missing here?
Thanks,
Bruce

Not really. Each computer will have a separate library within iTunes. They can be set to use the same file storage location but I have no idea how to do that with a Mac.

Sharing an iTunes library for syncing with an iPhone

Not sure if this belongs in iTunes or iPhone thread but here goes. My wife and I have our own profiles on our Mac. Right now all the music/video is in my iTunes library. We are both getting iPhones and I want both of us to be able to sync the music/video from iTunes (maybe from some shared library folder) but I want her mail/contacts/addresses/etc. to synch on her phone and mine to synch with mine. She will be logged in to her account when she syncs and I'll be logged into my account when I sync. Is this possible with iTunes? Can we put the iTunes music/video in a shared folder that we both attach to and yet still sync our iPhones with our own info? I'd prefer not to duplicate the iTunes library in both accounts because that just wastes space. Any ideas?

My husband and I have the exact same question. Have you figured this out? We were getting ready to share our music library and then panicked realizing that this might then totally mess up our synching to our own separate iPhones.
Any info would be GREATLY appreciated!!!
-- Jaynie

Sharing one iTunes library

I have an iTunes library on my iMac and would like to move this to an network drive and have both my iMacs and my MBP share this same library. I have tried a few ways and have had no luck. What steps should I be doing in order to get these results:
Library located on network drive
All 3 macs use this library as their default
Any changes made are shared between all 3 computers.
Thanks

No - the appleTV will only show libraries which are exposed through 'home sharing' , which means you have to have an iTunes instance running somewhere, which you can't do on the NAS (you need a Mac or PC somewhere acting as a server, even if the files still live on the NAS). This is different from the DAAP sharing that lets the NAS 'share' the library to you that you can see at the moment.
To answer your original question, you should be playing the files as if from your local library - John's solution basically puts your library pointer alongside the files on the NAS. Another option would be to copy/keep the library files locally on the laptop, but then change the media files location (under preferences) to be the NAS.
The same point applies that you have to be connected to the network, but instead of failing to open and defaulting the library location - you'd just see '!' next to the files as its can't locate the directory associated with the media.

Sharing my iTunes library with other computers on the network

Hi Everybody,
I have an external hard disk with about 125 gigs of music on it, and I've spent a year going through it and categorizing it, and rating the songs. The hard disk is plugged into my Aiport Extreme, and communicates with my iMac just fine. My plan was to use my old windows laptop w/ iTunes, plug it into my stereo in the other room and have it pull music off the hd through the Airport, so I could have a jukebox for my stereo.
I have the windows machine communicating with the Airport and hd, so I have access to the music. I thought I might be able to get the library information if I Exported the Library to the external hd, but it did't work. Next I Exported my playlist from the Mac's iTunes, and Imported it on to the pc's. This shows my playlists, but they are all empty and there is no My Rating information.
What I would love it to do would be to have mirror playlist information on each computer, and any changes in the playlist would automatically get updated on the other computer's iTunes. for this I would think you would need your Library information at the source of the music, so on the external hard disk, and it would be shared by each computer. It'd be great if all the album covers did this too. I really don't want to have to go through all that music again on the pc, and would probably just use my iPod with my stereo if this is not possible. Any suggestions?
Forgive me if this has been written about already. Seems like someone else would have run into this too, but I couldn't find any searching through the discussions.
Thanks, -Victor

Chris CA wrote:
Move the entire _iTunes folder_ located in *My Documents/My Music*/ to a Shared directory. Make sure to set this folder for read/write permissions for all users.
I set my permissions as follows OS 10.4.X:
first under the original owners login, change all permissions to read & write, then change 'group' to wheel. Then change the owner from the user to system (I applied to all within ~ may not be necessary).
Start iTunes holding the Shift key and select *Choose existing library* then pick the iTunes library file you moved into the Shared directory.
In iTunes 7.5, you'll need to hold the Option key and then pick the /Users/Shared/iTunes/iTunes Music
Quit iTunes and log out of your user and let her log in.
Start iTunes holding the Shift key and select *Choose existing library* then pick the iTunes library file you moved into the Shared directory.
Now she needs to File -> *Add folder to library* and pick *My Documents*/My Music*/*iTunes*/iTunes music*.
This will add all her music to the common library.
Once this is complete, she can delete *My Documents*/My Music*/*iTunes.
Do this for all users. Any changes made by one will be seen by all.

Sharing an iTunes library - best practices/howto? (iDrive?)

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