The macosxhints Forums - iTunes 7 : "keep library organized" the way I want?

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- - iTunes 7 : "keep library organized" the way I want? (http://hintsforums.macworld.com/showthread.php?t=70696)

Quote:

Originally Posted by network23 (Post 371443)

In my case, I needed a way to restrict certain songs from younger kids in our household.

Interesting. I guess what's really needed is a way for iTunes to have multiple locations for music folders and a way to put passwords or user level permissions on each. Maybe in version 8?

In the meantime, you might try sharing selected playlists from your admin account and let the kids access them from their accounts. It requires you to keep iTunes running and your account logged in, but it shouldn't be difficult.

Ah, yes, well...I failed to mention the main question I had been asking in that other thread.

I actually share playlists from my account now, but when you share playlists, the others cannot use them to create their own playlists or burn cds.

My original off-topic question was my desire to have a central library of EVERYONE's music on a networked HD, thereby allowing everyone to use the songs as if the files were located in their own directories, but still control access to certain music.

I think you can do that. I have my iTunes library on an external hard drive that I only turn on if I want to listen to my music. On rare occasions, I've added music to iTunes without the drive turned on. What happens is that iTunes puts the music in the default location: ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music
When I turn on the external hard drive iTunes sees my main library and the music in the default location.

****** Important: I haven't verified this procedure, so you may want to test it on a duplicate song. You can create a duplicate by converting a song to a different format. *******

To duplicate this on your setup, open iTunes and create a playlist with all the songs you don't want the kids to have access to, select all of them, then drag & drop them to an empty folder on your hard drive. When you're sure you've got them all backed up, delete them from the iTunes library and then disconnect from the network drive. Finally, import them back into iTunes before you connect back to the network drive. They should appear on your system, but not others, since they won't be on the network drive.

****** Important: I haven't verified this procedure, so you may want to test it on a duplicate song. You can create a duplicate by converting a song to a different format. *******