Sharing iTunes between accounts on a single Mac

[virtuosity]

Hi

I had this working a while back... but (I can only think it's since I upgraded to iTunes 8) this has now stopped working...

1. I have moved my iTunes Music folder to /users/shared...

2. I go into iTunes preferences and change the location of the Music Library...

3. Restart iTunes...

4. Then I go into iTunes and it works - it's reading songs and movies from the shared location fine...

When I login as a different user (any admin user), repeat steps 2 and 3 and nothing - the library is empty when it's restarted

I also tried this hack from another site around 18 months ago...

http://www.macworld.com/article/58571/2007/06/sharingituneslibrary.html

The instructions are pretty much the same, although this involves creating aliases of the iTunes music library.xml file - but didn't seem to make any difference to the outcome

Anyone got any ideas please?
thanks!

 

[thithi]

what you have to do in iTunes is 'File -> Add to Library...' when logged in as an other user.
Select the folder '/users/shared...' as library location. That worked for me.
Hope this helps.

 

[virtuosity]

thanks - but if i "add to library" - its not gonna create the library all over again is it? i just wanna make sure cos my music library is 200GB

 

[MrM]

I did this once. I just left my iTunes folder in the same spot (moved an alias into the other users folder) and changed it's permissions to be read/write for the other user as well.

Worked like a charm.

 

[swiftaw]

For the second user, launch iTunes while holding down the Alt/Option key. This will then allow you to choose the library file to load.

 

[virtuosity]

ok worked a treat!! thanks for all your help guys!