Mac 101: Sharing your iTunes Library in 3 easy steps
Apple makes it super-easy for you to share your iTunes media between computers. It's just a matter of three steps to get iTunes sharing up and running. If you have a local network in your house but you've never tried this out, here's a simple quick-start.Read on to discover the three easy steps to music sharing nirvana.
1. By default, the OS X firewall blocks iTunes sharing, so if you're running a firewall, you'll need to enable this feature. On the computer that hosts your iTunes library, launch System Preferences. (It's in the Apple menu), select Sharing, click Firewall and check the iTunes Music Sharing box.
2. In iTunes, enable sharing: Open preferences, click the Sharing tab and chec the "Share my library on my local network" box. Share your entire library or only selected playlists. You can also specify a password to limit access. Click OK to confirm your preferences. iTunes reminds you that "Sharing music is for personal use only." Click OK.
3. Once you share your library it should automatically show up in the iTunes source list for all networked computers. If it does not, open preferences on that computer, click on the Sharing tab and make sure that "Look for shared libraries" is checked. Click OK.
Shared libraries are only available on your local network, so your friends in other countries won't be able to stream your library using this method.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Zack kitzmiller said 3:12PM on 5-21-2007
MyTunesRSS
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Zack kitzmiller said 3:19PM on 5-21-2007
Sorry, I was a little trigger happy.
I really prefer the opensource application MyTunesRSS. This allows for much more customizing of what Music is sent where, and also allows for music (that you wrote?) to be streamed outside of your house, to work or school.
Great app. http://www.codewave.de/products/mytunesrss/
Full Disclosure: I have no dealings with codewave. I do not develop nor hold stock in codewave.
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kin said 3:49PM on 5-21-2007
Is there anyway the shared files be display in CoverFlow? The lack of this feature is the reason why I created a Playlist for a my Lost DVDrip (original DVD) that is stored on a network PC.
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Alone2Gether said 4:23PM on 5-21-2007
I'm having trouble with one of my PeeCees. iTunes sharing is enabled on my Mac. PeeCee 1 is able to find the share folder on my Mac but PeeCee 2 can't. I'm pretty sure it's because PeeCee 2 has the firewall (ZoneAlarm), which PeeCee 1 doesn't.
Anyone behind a firewall having the same problem?
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tim said 5:14PM on 5-21-2007
blogging 101: post about anything
today we will continue to show you how we can add to the amount of posts we make daily by posting about another assinine topic in order to make it look like we are just reaching out to new mac users, when really its because we have nothing of value to post...and we cant get ads served if people have nothing to read, right?
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(01) said 10:02PM on 5-21-2007
I discovered this feature a few years back and within a week had everyone in my office sharing their music....good times. The only thing I find annoying about this is that you can't make playlists with music on a shared library. If anyone knows a way around this, please share your wisdom.. :-)
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surfwizz said 10:47PM on 5-21-2007
does anyone know if there is a way to share an iTunes library across two accounts on the same computer?
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tim said 1:39AM on 5-22-2007
surfwizz -
2 ways to do this.
1) the way i do it is i move my itunes library to /Users/Shared/. this way i can have it in any account and they can all modify it.
2) this is more complicated/inconvenient. log into one account, open itunes and enable sharing, leave itunes open and use the user login switcher to log into the other user, open itunes, and there you have your first accounts shared itunes files.
hope that helps, i prefer and recommend using a shared folder
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Ryan said 1:15PM on 5-22-2007
We have this running in our office as well, the only issue we have is there is a 5-user limit to sharing. I don't know if this was to save bandwidth or the computer's processor from using too much or what? So we had to mirror the whole huge playlist on a few of my user's systems, that way when one system has reached its 5-user max per day, there is another one that is open for other users to use.
I wish we could just setup an iTunes server that hosts as many connections as possible. Right now iTunes is the only thing running on a server we have, but again, only 5 connections... I would also love to make it so my users could create playlists from this hosted iTunes songs. This saves so much internet bandwidth as I did this to keep my users from listening to 'net radio.
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MacAddict said 12:35AM on 5-23-2007
As Zack Kitzmiller said in the first comment: use MyTunesRSS. It seems perfect for your needs. Your users could browse the music with a simple web browser and play music directly with the Flash player. No need for any other software than a browser on the client side. You can of course use XSPF or M3U playlists with other client software as well and therefor you can save playlists on your computer as well. The RSS feature also gives you the option to have them automatically updated, e.g. if someone changes the contents of a playlist.
MacAddict
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Heather said 5:45AM on 5-29-2007
Its one thing to share songs - but how do I share the playlists I've created on my main desktop (1.24 G4 PowerMac). We have a mini downstairs and an iBook and while they can see the library, neither can see the playlists. With 14,000 songs and 100 gigs of music, Playlists are important!
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MacAddict said 7:49AM on 5-29-2007
MyTunesRSS also uses the playlists created in iTunes as well as M3U files when using watch folder (and not the iTunes library) as a data source.
MacAddict
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