UPDATE: The solution to this was actually exceptionally simple: go to Preferences in iTunes and under the “Sharing” tab, check the box that says “Share my library on my local network.” Then in the other user account, where the “Music” drop down is on the upper left, just select that other user’s library. No need to move any files whatsoever or change any user permissions.

So in an attempt at battling my own procrastination, I recently created another user on my Macbook solely for writing. It's got a very clean, neat desktop, and the dock only has stuff like the Microsoft Office suite, Dictionary, and Wunderlist - things I use when writing. I also set it up without admin privileges, and set parental controls to block access to web browsers and games, just in case I got tempted (yes, of course I can always just log into my admin account to do that stuff, but the point is to create an extra step of difficulty so that I can't make the excuse of "oh let me just check my email real quick")

I quickly realized that OS X's permissions were going to cause me problems. I spent an hour trying to get all my writing project files to be accessible across users before just giving up and putting everything in the "Productivity" user's folder.

I also like to listen to music while I write, but as all of my music was stored in the "Admin" user's folder, it wasn't accessible from the other user (Quick note: I don't like keeping my music files in the default "iTunes Media" folder, so I have a separate "Music" folder). My solution was to move my whole "Music" folder onto the Shared drive, and then re-import all of those files into iTunes for both users.

This seemed to work. At least I was able to listen to everything without any issues. But I've started to run into some weird behavior. When I re-imported my music, a handful of albums lost some or all of their metadata. I re-added the metadata, but those changes didn't port over to the other user.

For some of them, if I actually play the song, the metadata updates and shows up correctly for the other user. But this is a pain to have to do for each track manually -- is there someway to force all tracks to 'sync', or to auto-update everything that's been changed?

For other files, looking at them with the Media-Info app, it looks as if the metadata hasn't actually been updated at all - even though it shows that it has been in iTunes for the "Admin" user.

I know iTunes keeps some info in a library file, and I suspect part of my problems have to do with either the location of that file or the fact that there are two with conflicting info. I'm not sure though what could explain the metadata sometimes not actually changing.

Somebody help me out here! I'm extremely confused and just want to be able to listen to some tunes while I write :(