My daughter (8) and I both got iPod Nanos for Christmas. I created one account and started downloading songs. At first I didn’t care if the music was mixed but now I’m wishing we actually had 2 separate accounts because I have some songs I don’t want going on her iPod (and I don’t want most of her songs on mine!) Instead of having to check/uncheck every time one of us logs in to iTunes, is there a way to create an account for her and transfer her music to it? Or will I have to buy her songs again under her account?
An easy way to get around this is to create two playlists, one for you and one for her, and populate each playlist with the music you want on each ipod. Then when you sync, sync playlists only and tick the relevant one.
Edit: I don’t think having separate accounts will achieve anything as the songs will still be part of the same library and it’s the library that matters when it comes to syncing, not the accounts. As an example, my wife’s laptop has music on it purchased by her, me, and my mother. All of it is available to sync to a connected ipod.
While I’ve never tried this, you might try creating separate accounts on your computer for yourself and your daughter. Every user on a computer gets their own iTunes library file, which is essentially a directory iTunes uses that tells it where the music files are (along with stuff like play count, ratings, etc.) You can then separate out the files for her music and your music into the appropriate user folders. I’m pretty sure (though not 100% sure) that the DRM won’t matter if you split accounts like this, since the DRM rights are tied to a given machine and not to a given user.
Of course, you might prefer that your eight-year-old didn’t have her own account on your computer, in which case this wouldn’t work. But otherwise, it’d probably be the best solution.
unless the child never uses the computer, I would find it odd not to want a special account for the kid. You can then lock down anything you don’t want the kid to have access to, while not locking it down for your use.
The main reason not use multiple accounts is that hassle, but I’d think it’d be worth if I had a kid.
The separate playlist idea is an easy one. You can automate the process easily. Just add a keyword in the “comments” field for each song that she should have, and a different keyword for songs you want. Any songs you both want get both keywords.
Then do two “smart” playlists based on the inclusion of the keywords. Changing the comments will immediately update both playlists. Set up the iPods to sync from the appropriate playlists, and you’re done.
We have separate users for each kid (and for ourselves). The libraries are separate - but by that I mean just the library info such as playlists, etc. We keep all the music in a directory that’s accessible to all users.
Periodically I’ll go into iTunes and do an import of all the files in the directory. It’ll skip stuff it already knows about, and set up pointers to anything the kids have added. I’ll do the same from their users so they have access to our music.
We each have our own iTunes accounts. I believe I did have to “authorize” their users to have access to my iTunes purchases (and similarly had to authorize my user to have access to their purchases) or we couldn’t play each other’s music.
Of course, with a shared music location, your daughter could import stuff into her library that you don’t want her to listen to. If you don’t want a shared location for all your music, simply create a clone of your directory under her user, with copies of everything you want her to have access to - i.e. omit all the non-kid-appropriate stuff. You’d still need to do the user authorization thing.
If you don’t have separate computer user accounts, then the separate playlist may be the best way to go. I suppose it’s possible to create separate library (index) files and password protect those, but I don’t know how well that works and it sounds like a pain.
One thing you can do is create analternate iTunes library. You can then switch libraries by holding down option or alt when opening iTunes. This effectively does the same thing as a separate user account would do.