Do the same song from iTunes take up hard drive space when downloaded to multiple Mac profiles?

Yes, it does.

The only way around it would be to share the media, but that has it's own drawbacks. The main one being what any one person might download isn't automaticaly added to the other libraries. So, no, no easy way around it.

cazman4 wrote:

Would you except that the way I'm doing it is the best?

What is best is what works best for you...

For example this is my approach to multiple users, using a single library visible from each profile.

The Apple support document How to use multiple iPods with one computer suggests a number of ways for managing the media content. I use method two (Sync with selected playlists) with a slight twist. Rather than regular playlists I set the grouping field to indicate which users should receive which tracks and create smart playlists based on the content of this field.

e.g.

"Alice's Tracks" is "Grouping contains Alice" + "Kind contains audio"

"Bob's Videos" is "Grouping contains Bob" + "Kind does not contain audio"

Tracks that both Alice & Bob want on their iPods have the grouping set to "Alice/Bob"

etc.

I currently manage our family's five iDevices using this system, each getting a different selection to suit their tastes and the capacity of their device. An advantage of using the grouping field is that it is stored in file tags (for non-wav audio files anyway) so that it is relatively easy to recreate the playlists should the iTunes library get trashed and need rebuilding. Also useful if you move files about manually as playlist membership is preserved when you delete & re-import the tracks.

tt2

I don't really have any experience managing multiple users on one computer. However I'd say tt2's method looks like one way you can do it. As he says, the best way is the way that works best for you.