The "right" way to handle multiple devices, accounts and the cloud?

You can still sync to your Mac Mini to sync via USB or now even over wifi.

iTunes Match seems to be only for people who have music that haven't been purchased from iTunes, but now want to go PC free. Without streaming from iCloud, I see no other use for iTunes Match unless you are the sort of person that has a HUGE non-iTunes library that you can't possibly sync to your device, but also want to listen to songs in that library spontaneously away from your Mac and want it right now.

Well it seems like the first thing you should do is consolidate your iTunes libraries so that you don't have 4 copies of everything, one for each user logged in to your Mac Mini. How you do that is consolidate all 4 iTunes folders to one folder located in the /Users/Shared/ folder and update each of your iTunes to point to that folder accordingly. That way you have one iTunes library, only one copy of your media, but accessible from multiple users.

One caveat is that if somebody is logged on and has iTunes open, you can't fast switch to another user and open iTunes. Apple made it so that only one user and one instance of iTunes can open a iTunes library at a time.

For your iTunes match situation, it does sound like you would be much better off sharing a single Apple ID with one iTunes Match. For consolidating, make sure you have everything everybody has shared via Home Sharing to the main account you'd like to move over to, and then simply go to each device Settings, Store, and the sign out of the original Apple ID and logon using the shared main Apple ID. I just looked at it and the automatic downloading is already live in iOS! You can specify if you want to do music, apps, and books separately in case you may want to automatically download music but not apps or books.

Hi.

I have been thinking long and hard regarding my concerns with having multiple iTunes accounts (3 in fact, built up over many years) and how I can merge them all into one iTunes account and then it dawned on me that this is possibly where iTunes match will come into its own and resolve this for me. I am thinking that I would need to log into each iTunes account and ensure that I have all the music, apps, books etc that isnt in my library downloaded, repeat this for each account, This would need to be done prior to signing up for iCloud.

Once I have done this, I would log into my iTunes account that I want to be the primary and then sign up for iCloud, I would then sign up for iTunes match which would scan all content in my library (not purchased from my primary iTunes account - I am hoping it would include the music downloaded from my other 2 iTunes accounts). If it does do this then I can disable my other 2 accounts and I have all music, apps, books, films etc on one iTunes account up in the cloud.

If anyone thinks this will not work then can you let me know.

Thanks

Neil

Hi again,

I was wondering where you have read that previously purchased content from other iTunes libraries will not be included in the iTunes match service? It would be a shame if this was true, as I understand that this is a big issue with a number of users and seeing as iTunes match is effectively a pirate music amnesty I would have thought that they would let us do this with music we have purchased.

Thanks

Neil

I'm actually going to guess that any music shared via Home Sharing in iTunes will be treated like regular purchased music and be available in iCloud automatically, without the need for iTunes Match. Hopefully they'll address this issue when it comes out officially.

Having only one library among multiple users can be very annoying. I would actually suggest the way I have my iTunes libraries configured. I have an iMac and a MacBook Pro. My wife and I each have a login on each machine. The iMac acts as our household media server. We also each have an iPhone and we have an iPad 2. All of these devices share one iTunes account. In order to allow each of us to have our individual libraries, I configured iTunes such that the music, movies, etc. are not managed within the library. I keep all media under Users/Shared and point each library to this location. That way both libraries can be open at the same time while having only one copy of all the files. I do however have a shared iPhoto library in Users/Shared simply because I prefer to have iPhoto manage the file structure of my photos. But in that case, I can only have one instance of the library running. Hope this suggestion helps. I do however fear that this setup will not work well when iCloud comes. I don't know if apple has addressed multiple users devices and computer logins that use one iTunes account.