Sharing music between different accounts - is this how it works?

Question

The way iTunes shares music between different users seems a bit poor.
I have two user accounts set up on the same PC, with music files accessed by each from the same folder (as described here: How To Share Music Between Different Accounts On A Single Computer).
My main issues are:
1) I have to manually add new music added by the other user instead of it just appearing in iTunes.
2) iTunes doesn't recognise if a music file is already in the joint library, so we end up with two copies of things (particularly tiresome for podcasts).
Am I doing something wrong - maybe there is an easy way around this?
... or do the people at Apple need to do a bit of work here?
Pentium 4   Windows XP  

Answer 1

By default, any new file or folder created is set to be read+write for the creator, and read-only for everyone else. The file creator can grant write access to other users by changing the permissions on a folder and its contents, as Neil suggests. But you'll have to repeat that process every time a new file is added.
Fortunately, there is a way to automatically grant read+write access to all files created or copied to the folder. First go to System Preferences -> Accounts. Click the + button under the users list. Then, make a new group; calling it "sharegroup" or something similar. Add the users you want to the group.
Then put all the files you want to share into a commonly-accessible folder, such as a subfolder in /Users/Shared.
Then log in to an admin account and open Terminal. Paste in the following two lines:
sudo chmod -R +a "sharegroup allow delete,chown,list,search,add_file,\
addsubdirectory,delete_child,file_inherit,directoryinherit" \
Press return, then drag the folder into the Terminal window, and press return again. Enter admin password when prompted and press return. That should do it. Everything there now should be fully writable by all users in sharegroup. New files that are *created in* or *copied to* the folder will be the same way.
Files that you *move in* from a different location on the same hard drive won't be, though. So make sure you copy previously existing files into the sharefolder instead of moving them (hold down option key while dragging to copy) so that they get the custom permissions applied.