Two iTunes accounts, combined music collection. Best iCloud path?

[Dirk the Daring]

The short version:

* My wife and I each have our own iTunes accounts.
* We each sync to our own computers, with music and video unchecked.
* We have a third computer with our music and videos. We sync our devices to this computer with music and video checked.

The end result is that we share media, but nothing else. We would like to continue this concept using iCloud.What is the best way to do this? Can we still share some things and not others? Do we need to make a "common" account?

We have not tried anything yet-- there is some concern that we'll screw something up...

 

[C64]

I assume you have a single library with music and videos on that third computer. Do you use those iTunes accounts for buying music and videos as well?

In any case, nothing would have to change. You'll want to convert your separate iTunes IDs to iCloud accounts. This can be done on OS X 10.7.2 or on an iOS device running iOS 5. Your iTunes ID (probably an email address; doesn't have to be a @me.com account) will then be your primary iCloud account. If it's not an @me.com address, but you want to use iCloud mail, you can create a new @me.com address which is associated with your new iCloud account. So e.g. yourname@yourdomain.com as a primary iCloud ID and yourname@me.com associated to that for iCloud email. But using iCloud email is optional.

After you've setup those you can sync all your personal stuff (documents, calendars, contacts, etc.) to your iCloud account and that back to your computer (via iCloud, Wi-Fi or a cable). So basically what you're doing right now. When you want to sync music and videos to your devices you'll just connect it to the third computer and only sync music and videos.

However, when you buy new music on iTunes using one of your iTunes IDs (which are now also your personal iCloud IDs), that'll be only linked to that ID. Say you're both purchasing music on your iOS devices, the only way to get it all back to your third computer is to switch between your accounts in iTunes and retrieve the new purchases. Which might be a lot of work. But you can also say: we only buy music using her account, and setup iTunes on the music computer to be synced with her account. Than it'll be updated all the time, and then he can connect his iOS device to that computer manually to get the newly purchased music.

Hope this makes sense

 

[Dirk the Daring]

To answer your questions first:

* We do use the accounts to buy music. We have some purchases on each account.
* We don't have mobile me, and it isn't important to us.
* iCloud email isn't needed

So, from what you say, turning on iCloud would not interfere with us connecting to the third computer for music and videos.

If we have iCloud on our personal machines, with our own individual accounts, and are still using the third machine for music... Would the music somehow end up on iCloud anyway, when we connect our devices to our main computers?


And one last theoretical, just to close the loop What happens if we make a THIRD iCloud account, and had our main music collection on that account, connected to the third computer? Would anything get messed up? (This would open up some other options for us, I'm not just being crazy.)

Just to clarify, the final setup would be:

* My computer, on my iCloud acccount
* My wife's computer, on her iCloud account
* The media computer, on its own iCloud account
* My iPhone/iPad/etc, synced to my computer and my iCloud for everything but music/video. Synced to media computer for music/video.
* My wife's iPhone/iPad/etc, synced to her computer and her iCloud for everything but music/video. Synced to media computer for music/video.

This appears to give us what we basically want, although we benefit from iCloud less than other people

Thanks for your previous response-- It was very helpful in itself!