Share Music in iTunes

Recently, I encountered one issue about sharing music between user accounts in one iMac or between iMacs. I have two iMacs and created several accounts. I would like to share some music songs between accounts.

As far I know so far, I found three ways to move music songs to another account.

Using Migration Assistant Application

What I did before for sharing music between iMac computers is the run the Migration Assistant to copy one user account to another Mac computer. Then I had to remove all the user documents, mail settings, iPhoto, iMovie files if I don't want them in another new account. It works fine to duplicate iTunes libraries. However, it is just too much to do afterwards I don't want other things migrated.

Moving iTunes Media Folder to a Public Accessible Folder

Yesterday I found some information from Apple web site about sharing music between accounts in one Mac computer. Under the section of On Max OS X. There are two ways to share. First to move "iTunes Media" folder to a public accessible folder. To find out the "iTunes Media" folder, you go to iTunes preference from iTunes menu, and then go to Advanced tab:



In above window, I moved the folder "iTunes Music" to my public folder. The original one is the same folder name under ~/Music/iTunes.

After that, I went to other accounts and opened iTunes. It seems that they can see my shared iTunes library, but I did the same thing for other accounts, I cannot see their music in my account. Not sure what prevented me from seeing their music.

Adding Another User iTunes Media Folder to Your iTunes Library

Then I followed the second option from Apple web information to add their music media folder from their public accessible folder to my iTunes library. See the instructions in the above link (under the section of "To listen to another account's music files". After I finished the steps, I was able to add their library into my library. Actually, all the music in another account are imported. I think I can do the same thing for an account on another Mac. If I want to move the files into my library, I may need to check my preference to Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library.

This option is actually adding the whole library of music items into my library. There seems that there is no way to select specific music files. Fortunately, I found a way to view library files by Artists in list view. This way can be used as filter to view songs by artists.