Lots of music - one iTunes
January 17, 2010 1:28 PM   Subscribe

Attending a "jukebox" party, where several people bring their music files on external drives and play through one computer. How can we (or should we) use iTunes without creating all kinds of mayhem?

Will plugging in and playing music from someone else's external drive create unwanted files? We basically want a temporary setup that won't leave the host's computer with extra files, libraries, etc.

Google didn't really give me much on this.
Thanks...
posted by smelvis to Computers & Internet (6 answers total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
In iTunes preferences, you can set a preference that disables copying music to the iTunes Library folder when it's added. What I might do is set that preference, then add all the extra music to a playlist. When the people leave, remove all the music from that playlist from the library (or turn on the "Date added" sort column, and look at the time the first "foreign" song was added.

Maybe make a backup of the iTunes Library file before you do this, just in case.
posted by aaronbeekay at 1:32 PM on January 17, 2010


are you on a Mac or a Windows system? this sounds like a good reason to download a separate media player app for a night - VLC will let you do playlists, for example.
posted by mrg at 1:49 PM on January 17, 2010


Best answer: You can easily build an iTunes library from the external files without copying them to the main hard drive, as aaronbeekay has mentioned (unselect the "Keep iTunes Music folder organized" checkbox). When the external drive is upplugged the files will come up as unavailable so you just delete them and it should all be back to normal. I have an external harddrive plus a flash drive we move between computers pretty often and those files go into and out of my iTunes library pretty regularly without a problem. If you don't delete them they'll become available again if you plug the same external disk in at some point in the future, you just need to restart iTunes

What is a problem is that iTunes is slow. Like really slow. Adding the files to the library so it can read them will take a noticeable amount of time, possibly upwards of half an hour if you have lots of files (disclaimer: I'm using windows vista or XP on a decent computer, it might be better on a Mac). It's worse if there is album artwork, gapless albums or the sound check option turned on. So you either waste lots of time, need to set them up ahead of time, or use something else, personally I'd go with the latter option. I've found the winamp is much faster to add new media to the library and setting up basic playlists works pretty much the same way, and there are many other options out there also.

If you all bring iPod this won't be such a problem of course, as they already have their own iTunes-readable library already set up. You wouldn't have to change the main library at all, just play the music straight from the iPods (not so useful if you want to make a big combined playlist). When you first plug them in make sure to choose the option not to sync, you should get a popup that asks you. I don't think this would be as flexible as just using different software.
posted by shelleycat at 2:02 PM on January 17, 2010


I meant to link to this. You'll want to uncheck the top two options.
posted by shelleycat at 2:04 PM on January 17, 2010


What is mentioned above will work assuming you only play from the connected drive.

However if you plan for everyones music to be mixed together when playing, you will have to do it a little different. I would suggest everyone just adding their music to itunes when they arrive, then at the end of the night just sort by date added in itunes and delete everything added from the night. Since you are easily deleting everything when the night is over, it doesn't really matter if the songs get copied over or not.

Either way you do it (one persons music at a time, or all mixed together) at the end of the night, you will probably want to sort by date added and remove everything.
posted by travis08 at 5:23 PM on January 17, 2010


Response by poster: Thanks all. I think the host uses a PC, but know iTunes is involved.
posted by smelvis at 5:32 PM on January 17, 2010


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