Help share iTunes music folder

newapplejack wrote:
I have followed the directions " how to share music between different accounts on a single computer".

Do not follow those instructions. Rather, make a copy of your iTunes content and give it to him. Let him add what he wants to his iTunes library, and he can delete the rest.

On an ongoing basis, if either of you acquires something new that the other wants, they can provide a copy.

Let him go through it and copy what he wants, which will surely be less than all 400 GB.

The sharing option is really for people who wish to mutually allow full access so that any one can make changes or deletions that will affect all. Given your concern about "so he would stay out of our contacts, calendar, photos, etc," I don't think full sharing is the paradigm you are looking for.

I agree that copying music over is not a satisfactory solution for many people. And as anyone who has tried it or read about it knows, the official Apple method ( http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1203) only partly works. New music added by one user won't show up for the other.

This method for completely sharing iTunes library between two user accounts on one mac has worked perfectly for me. Each accounts sees the same library, and items added by one person are seen by the other. You can sync two iPhones to the library from two different user accounts and sync different playlists, share apps but have different ones on each iPhone, etc. The only requirement is that each user quits iTunes before the other opens it. It is essentially the method nicely described here: http://steve-on-sakai.blogspot.com/2009/07/really-sharing-your-itunes-library.ht ml

Much of the following procedure you won't have to do. I suspect in your case you have a permissions issue that prevents sharing. You can either set your external drive to ignore permissions, or follow the relevant portion of the following procedure.

BACK UP YOUR iTUNES FOLDER FIRST!

1. Decide which library will become the shared library. Log into that user's account. Make sure iTunes is not running. Drag the entire iTunes folder (containing iTunes Library, iTunes Music or iTunes Media, everything) into /Users/Shared.

2. Open iTunes while the option key is depressed. In the resulting dialog, select Choose Library and navigate to the one you just put in the Shared folder.

3. Go to iTunes > Preferences, then to the Advanced tab. Make sure the following two items are checked:
Keep iTunes Media folder organized
Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library

4. Quit iTunes.

5. Open Terminal (in /Applications/Utilities folder). Carefully type the following:
cd /Users/Shared --then hit Enter
chmod -R 775 iTunes --then hit Enter

6. Switch to the other account. Just as you did before, open iTunes with the option key down and navigate to the shared iTunes folder.

7. Just as you did before, make sure the same two preferences in the Advanced tab are checked.

That's it. Good luck, please report back.