Two Accounts Merging to One Computer?

Question

Hi there - hope this is the right forum for this:
My significant other and I will be "merging households" in a few months, we are both avid Mac users, and we both have purchased a very huge chunk of our music via the iTunes store. Once we move in together, we are going to want a solution where we can have our music within a single iTunes library (on a single computer), so that we can have, say, the AppleTV access this one library. We also want to be able to sync the music from both of our iTunes accounts to both of our iPods. Basically, we're trying to avoid having to buy two copies of an album for our one household.
So far, I've been able to authorize his iTunes music store account on my computer (while maintaining the authorization of my own account), and he's sent me one of his purchased songs to test, and it plays. So multiple accounts on one Library seems to work at this point. If I were to sync my iPod, would this file download onto it and playback alright?
iBook G3 800MHz Mac OS X (10.4.8)
iBook G3 800MHz   Mac OS X (10.4.8)  

Answer 1

You can merge all the files from one computer to another. All the protected songs purchased via the iTunes store will need authorization (which it appears you already tested), but a single iTunes library can be authorized to play songs puchased from multiple users.
Each iTunes account can be authorized on up to 5 separate computers, and as far as I know there is no apparent limit on the number of authorized accounts on a single computer.
Any song in your iTunes library that you have authorization to play will (by default) sync with your iPod automatically (assuming your iPod's sync settings grabs your whole library) and play fine on your iPod.
To merge the two libraries simply copy the music from one computer to the other, then import all the songs either via Import in the File menu or more simply by draging and droping the whole folder into the iTunes window. All the songs will be listed in iTunes and stored inside the library along with all your previous songs.
To use the same library between the two separate computers is a bit different. You have to first move the iTunes library to an external networked hard drive, then point both of your iTunes to the library in iTunes->Preferences->Advanced. This is an imperfect solution as when one person adds a song it will not nessisarily show up in the other person's library (despite the fact they are stored in the same place).