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transfer music from one user account to another on the SAME mac?

My family (wife, son, daughter, and me) share an imac but we all have our own user accounts. Our entire itunes music library is in one user account and is getting to the point of being unmanageable.

Can I move some of my itunes library (e.g., my son's music) to another user account on the same iMac? Some songs were imported from CD and others were purchased from my Apple ID number.

It's my understanding that an ipod can only be synced with one itunes library at a time, but I thought Apple also restricted the usage of music bought from itunes to a finite number of computers. If this is true, I think I would be able to transfer a group of songs from one user account to another so long as the user accounts were on the same computer.

I was told that I could just drag the songs into a shared folder and then log into his account and drop them in iTunes.

Some specific questions:
1) Can I move all music files (CD and purchased) to the shared folder for dropping into his account?

2)The purchased ones were purchased under MY apple ID which I do not want to give him access to. Should I create one for him or just have him use mine and wait for my password. I would like to put an allowance on his new ID number and keep it separate from mine. Would that make a difference in the future if I wanted to use one of his songs on my iPod or in an iMovie project?

I just reinstalled my Lepoard OS X and put all my data back. I did not deauthorize anything before I did this. Did I need to? Or is even a clean install on the SAME machine ok and seen as the same authorization?

Thanks in advance!!

Intel 20" imac, MacBook, TC, Mac OS X (10.5.7)

Posted on Aug 4, 2009 6:35 PM

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1 reply

Aug 5, 2009 6:07 PM in response to merk850

You can give him copies of song files, either by using a shared folder, or by putting the copies on a USB flash drive from which he can copy them to his own iTunes library.

Any DRM-protected tracks that you have purchased from Apple can only be played if the user has authorization to the account(s) from which the tracks were purchased. Authorization requires physical access to the computer and knowledge of the password, and you can figure it from there!

Message was edited by: ed2345

transfer music from one user account to another on the SAME mac?

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