09-02-2011, 12:24 PM
It should be noted that none of this has anything to do with Lion or iTunes 10 per se. We have enough folks here already that are skittish about BOTH that further angst shouldn't be fed.
My wife and I have separate OS X accounts so that when we sync with our respective iPhones (within each person's iTunes) we only get our individual Contacts, Bookmarks and so on synced. And we share music and apps (same AppleID) but don't have any of that stuff duplicated. Here's how:
1) Point each person's iTunes Media folder to the same location, like you have done.
2) In each person's ~/Music folder, alias the correct iTunes folder there and delete the existing iTunes folder, after you're sure it's OK to do so. FYI, the real "iTunes" folder---the one you moved into Shared---can be named anything you want (so long as iTunes' preferences knows about it, see #1 above) but the iTunes alias for each user needs to be named iTunes.
3) Take whomever's iTunes wasn't the original "master library" you started this journey with and drop the now-shared iTunes Media folder into iTunes' "LIBRARY" area (upper left of iTunes window) so that it knows for sure what's in the shared library now. You may wind up with some duplicate listings (or a lot) but once you purge the fakes for this user this won't be an issue going forward. The payoff will be significant.
I suppose you could avoid fake duplicates initially on this second person's iTunes if your first deleted all the songs from it, but that could be bad news if you did it wrong and wound up deleting all the songs from your iTunes as well. Proceed cautiously here, or just deal with duplicates later one time.
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So for example we have our shared iTunes content on an external drive. What was once the iTunes folder happens to be named MomDadiTunes (because that drive additionally has another iTunes library on it named KidiTunes ...) iTunes for both users is pointed to the iTunes Media folder within MomDadiTunes but we each have an alias in our ~/Music folders named iTunes that points to MomDadiTunes.
Doing the above causes each person to share the other's playlists, which won't be ideal, but will ensure that whenever one person makes a change to the library it's reflected in the other person's iTunes. If you skip Step 2, whenever someone adds, deletes or changes a song in iTunes the other person will never see that change until you perform Step 3 again.
Let me know if that doesn't make sense.
My wife and I have separate OS X accounts so that when we sync with our respective iPhones (within each person's iTunes) we only get our individual Contacts, Bookmarks and so on synced. And we share music and apps (same AppleID) but don't have any of that stuff duplicated. Here's how:
1) Point each person's iTunes Media folder to the same location, like you have done.
2) In each person's ~/Music folder, alias the correct iTunes folder there and delete the existing iTunes folder, after you're sure it's OK to do so. FYI, the real "iTunes" folder---the one you moved into Shared---can be named anything you want (so long as iTunes' preferences knows about it, see #1 above) but the iTunes alias for each user needs to be named iTunes.
3) Take whomever's iTunes wasn't the original "master library" you started this journey with and drop the now-shared iTunes Media folder into iTunes' "LIBRARY" area (upper left of iTunes window) so that it knows for sure what's in the shared library now. You may wind up with some duplicate listings (or a lot) but once you purge the fakes for this user this won't be an issue going forward. The payoff will be significant.
I suppose you could avoid fake duplicates initially on this second person's iTunes if your first deleted all the songs from it, but that could be bad news if you did it wrong and wound up deleting all the songs from your iTunes as well. Proceed cautiously here, or just deal with duplicates later one time.
************************
So for example we have our shared iTunes content on an external drive. What was once the iTunes folder happens to be named MomDadiTunes (because that drive additionally has another iTunes library on it named KidiTunes ...) iTunes for both users is pointed to the iTunes Media folder within MomDadiTunes but we each have an alias in our ~/Music folders named iTunes that points to MomDadiTunes.
Doing the above causes each person to share the other's playlists, which won't be ideal, but will ensure that whenever one person makes a change to the library it's reflected in the other person's iTunes. If you skip Step 2, whenever someone adds, deletes or changes a song in iTunes the other person will never see that change until you perform Step 3 again.
Let me know if that doesn't make sense.