transfering songs from iTunes to iTunes on the same Mac

L

lupinthe3rd

macrumors newbie
This might be very simple, but if it is I can't work it out. I've searched the forums too and can't find the answer.

On our iMac the missus and I both have our own music collections on our seperate iTunes (different accounts). Whilst our taste in music is quite different, there are a few tracks and albums that we'd like to share/transfer now and again.

Is there an easy way of doing this without copying the entire library? Am I missing something really obvious?

Thanks!
 
lupinthe3rd said:
This might be very simple, but if it is I can't work it out. I've searched the forums too and can't find the answer.

On our iMac the missus and I both have our own music collections on our seperate iTunes (different accounts). Whilst our taste in music is quite different, there are a few tracks and albums that we'd like to share/transfer now and again.

Is there an easy way of doing this without copying the entire library? Am I missing something really obvious?

Thanks!
Click to expand...
Not an easy way without re-doing your iTunes library by putting it in a shared folder on your system.
For a really simple solution, enable fast user switching, log in as one user, start itunes, make sure "sharing" is on in the prefs, and fast user switch to the other user, start itunes and enable "look for shared music"
Depending on your setup this could be a 1 minute job or at most 3 minutes if you know your way around the finder/itunes
 
Or you can just control-click on the songs in iTunes, and select "show song file" and drag the file into your wife's Drop Box (home/public/dropbox). Then log in your wife's account and pull the song from the Drop Box into iTunes.

Thats just copying the songs over...dunno if you were looking for this or a more difficult approach, but if thats the case the previous poster covered it.

Good Luck
 
Add folder or add file if you know the location. If you want the location, ctrl-click/right click for the info.
 
Multiple Users, Multiple Computers. Itunes Song management... There's gotta be a better way.
 
I also find this annoying. I have set my ibook up so that my wife and I share an iTunes library in the shared user folder. But if one of us buys something from the iTMS it doesn't show up in the other library. gggrrrrrrr.
 
Put you music collection in a shared folder. It's the easiest way that doesn't involve multiple copies of the music files on your computer. Doubling up 15 Gigs of music just isn't a good idea.
 
mactastic said:
Put you music collection in a shared folder. It's the easiest way that doesn't involve multiple copies of the music files on your computer. Doubling up 15 Gigs of music just isn't a good idea.
Click to expand...

that's just what i did. i created a folder in users called music and on get info i made sure we could both read/write to it. for my itunes adv preferences i set itunes folder to /users/music and clicked "copy files to itunes". in my wife's pref i also set to /users/music but did not select "copy files to itunes"

this way i add music to the library permanently on my account. on my wife's account i just select the folders of the artists' that she wants.

kind of complicated.
 
I agree, iTunes needs a better way for people to share a library. I too have used the old share a single library, but am frustrated that iTunes can't auto update so that both libraries have the same songs. Come on Apple, you've got a great multiple user interface, a great music program, but they don't work well together.
 
I agree folks

I have multiple users on my iMac. One for my daughter, and three for me. I find it easier to keep my work and private accounts separate. This makes searching easier, iPhoto less of a mess, and I can custmize my desktop, dock, ect, for a different workflow. Also have a differnt account for those PRIVATE files...Anyway it is really frustrating not having an elegant solution to accessing that my music accross my differnt users. Come on Apple, you make it so beautiful to share music and photos on a network, but there is a basic need to have the option to share those files across multiple users.
 
WE ARE ALL WRONG!!..or somethin'

Well folks I have to apologize to the hard working folks at Apple. This stuff works now! Under Panther, the above circumstances were true. Turning on, and looking for, Shared music existed for those on a network, but nothing it seemed for sharing among different user accounts. Well it never occured to me to try it again after installing Tiger to try it again, but after the above post I did and it works great.

I went just like before into a users iTunes Preferences, clicked Sharing, and selected the appropriate tabs. I then left iTunes running but not playing, and logged in under my work user account. Started up iTunes using my favorite Voice command into the mic, and bam there on the left source list was my music.

Not sure this was a fix or a new feature that was slipped into Tiger or the latest version of iTunes, but this is how I expected it to work from the beginning. If you try to quit iTunes on the user account the the music coming from, Apple put a nice warnig there too. See the pic
 

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Weird

I was always able to share that way in Panther. I just wish you could make it so you could share actual libraries and be able to burn songs or put them in a playlist.
 
I copy music to my wife's Mac rather than trying to share a library. The duplicate storage doesn't bother me; it gives me a "free" backup copy.
 
so.. you copy the entire itunes music folder, database, files etc and all??

Doctor Q said:
I copy music to my wife's Mac rather than trying to share a library. The duplicate storage doesn't bother me; it gives me a "free" backup copy.
Click to expand...
 
Bozola said:
so.. you copy the entire itunes music folder, database, files etc and all??
Click to expand...
No, because she I and have mostly different taste. She's got Keane and Maroon 5 and other tasteful music and I'm blasting away with Foo Fighters and Black Eyed Peas and other noise. So we copy individual files when our interests overlap and the two Macs are authorized together on one iTMS account.
 
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