Petr Šourek When I switched to Mac OS, I chose iTunes as my music player because of the ability to catalog music. You could argue that there are other and possibly better players with the same capabilities, but I wanted a simple player and preferably one that came with the system.
Anyway, I'm not working on the computer alone, but so is my girlfriend, so the problem arose. I didn't want to have a duplicate library, but just one shared for both of us, because we both listen to the same music. I searched the internet for a while and the solution was easy. This short tutorial will tell you how to share libraries between multiple accounts.
The first thing we need to do is choose where to put our library. It must be a place that everyone can access. For example:
Mac OS: /Users/Shared
Windows 2000 and XP: Documents and SettingsAll UsersDocumentsMy Music
Windows Vista to 7: UsersPublicPublic Music
It must be a directory that everyone will have access to, which they do and should be on every system.
Subsequently, you need to find your directory with music. If your library was created before iTunes 9, this directory will be named "iTunes Music" it will be called otherwise "iTunes Media". And you can find it in your home directory:
Mac OS: ~/Music/iTunes or ~/Documents/iTunes
Windows 2000 and XP: Documents and Settings usernameMy DocumentsMy MusiciTunes
Windows Vista and 7: UsersusernameMusiciTunes
The assumption that all music will be in these directories is that you have clicked on the "Advanced" tab in the iTunes settings: Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library.
If you don't have this, don't worry, the music can be easily consolidated without having to add everything to the library again. Just in the menu "File->Library" select the "Organize Library..." option, leave both options clicked and press OK. Let iTunes copy everything to the directory.
Quit iTunes.
Open both directories in two windows in the Finder. That is, in one window your library and in the next window the destination directory where you want to copy the music. In Windows, use Total Commander, Explorer, in short, whatever suits you and do the same.
Now drag "iTunes Music" or "iTunes Media" directory to a new directory. !ATTENTION! Drag only the "iTunes Music" or "iTunes Media" directory, never the parent directory and that is "iTunes"!
Launch iTunes.
Go to settings and the “Advanced” tab and click “Change…” next to the “iTunes media folder location” option.
Select the new location and click OK.
Now repeat the last two steps for each account on the computer and you're done.
Source: Apple Lossless Audio CODEC (ALAC),
Very nice article. Kudos to the author, this is exactly what I was looking for ;-)
Thank you, I'm still preparing the same for iPhoto, if I can do it, I think it will be at the beginning of next week. There is a minor problem with Aperture :( not even Apple officially supports it there, I have come up with a solution, but I still need to polish ;)
Sorry for offtopic, but I don't know where else to write this. Could someone from the admin arrange an lrpsi icon for the iPhone? I have an iPhone 4 and after saving Jablickare on the Homescreen, the icon is in terrible resolution. Can something be done about it? Thanks
Surely something can be done about it. Hold on.
Thanks for the info. I have one question that also concerns iTunes, maybe someone can help. What is the easiest way to copy the iTunes library from one computer to another so that it is in both? I know Migration Assistant, but is it possible in another way? The problem there is that I have the same account on both machines and it keeps asking me to create a new account and I don't want that. I tried to add to the library by choosing in iTunes file / add to library... with the fact that I entered the existing library as the source and it doesn't work, iTunes freezes, after about half a day about 5% was downloaded. The only way that is tedious is to manually extract the albums into the folder and then upload them to iTunes, but considering that the library is about 90GB, it's really useless. Thanks for any advice.
Library information is in ~/iTunes or ~/Documents/iTunes. It is enough to overwrite the address book on the new computer with this address book and it will work. If you have a library shared for multiple uses on one computer, see this article, then you still have to copy this address book to a new one.
Especially before you start copying the ~/iTunes folder there, close iTunes. At the next launch, you should have the exact same library fully functional on the new computer.
I have a slightly different question about iTunes, or problem. When I have several albums with the name Greatest Hits and The Greatest Hits (it doesn't matter, the iTunes member seems to omit The in alphabetical sorting), when I sort by albums, I always get the first track from each album, then the second from each, etc. So they don't work tracks in a row from one album, albums on stridack from multiple albums. At the same time, there is a different artist, a different total number of songs in the album, etc. I can't deal with it, and it causes a lot of problems in various situations even on the iPhone. E.g. I have a playlist of the Greatest Hits album by Texas, and when I play it (observed on the iPhone) between the songs from Texas and songs from other albums, I have chosen only my playlist. The display of albums on the iPhone in cover flow is also problematic - many times I have an album fragmented into several albums. It is clear that with CDs with soundtracks, every performer is different, but the album is just that, it has one name, the number of tracks in the album and their order are correctly indicated... I am unhappy about it. If I have an album by Rihanna and one track has someone else as an artist (e.g. Rihanna ft. Beyonce), then that's also a problem - like two albums. Well, at least I'd like to solve the problem with Greatest Hits - it doesn't show up not only on the iPhone, but also on the Mac in iTunes - I just compare everything by album and it appears scattered. What with this???
I don't know of any official way :( Maybe what I do and the fact that I write the artist in the album would help:
Abba - Greatest hits
eventual
Greatest hits - Abba
That might help. To be honest, I do it for another reason, and that is because I don't like how the mp3s are shuffled in the library and I want to have everything in 1 directory, for example the aforementioned Abba - Greatest hits, so I also click on compilation and it is saved to:
Library/Compilation directory. I admit it's not the happiest solution, but it could help as a workaround.
But yes, thanks for your own solution, I'm happy for any advice and experience. Of course, I'd be happy if it just worked the way it's supposed to.
You're welcome. From my experience, roughly 80-90% of things work as they should, i.e. as I would expect them to work. The rest can be avoided, although it is sometimes scratched under the left leg behind the right ear, but it works ;)
I am trying to create a shared iTunes music folder on a shared server for multiple users in the network in the same way. . . .but the iTunes client does not see the data. . . . can this procedure also be applied in the network? . . . or if not, can you advise any other procedure to have one iTunes Music folder on the server that will be accessed by other clients on the network?
(P2P network, MS Win 2003 server, MS W XP Pro + Mac OSX clients)
Hello,
please, give me an advice. I installed iTunes on WinXP, but I was kind of surprised that it copies music to documents as it likes. Why? I guess no one likes duplicates, especially when it reduces disk capacity a lot :(
Let's assume that iT understands that my folder at "D:\Music" is something like ballast, which iT itself wants to organize into a directory in Documents. So when it comes to recopying, wouldn't it go to "D:\Musika-final" so that I don't "taint data" on a disk intended only for system and program files?
Thank you Apple for the reply ;)
I'm sorry, no answer? Whoa!