Can I use iTunes on my Mac to control a music library on my PC?

March 17, 2006 6:24 PM

Before I bother setting up a network between my PC and MAC: Can I use iTunes on my Mac to control a music library on my PC?
posted by apetpsychic to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

Define "control."

You can certainly mount a filesystem over the network and play music that way, but it's not clear precisely what it is you hope to accomplish.
posted by majick at 6:30 PM on March 17, 2006

That's pretty much what I meant. I just would rather keep my large mp3 collection on my seldom used PC...

Though now I'm having problems with the PC to Mac filesharing. When I connect to server on the MAC and enter the SMB, it recognize the computer name, workgroup and user, but when I enter the password, it says the name isn't recognized.
posted by apetpsychic at 6:34 PM on March 17, 2006

I'm 97.4% sure that you can do this just with iTunes itself.

Put iTunes on the PC. Tell it to share the library out (Edit->Preferences->Library).

This is where my memory gets foggy. But you should be able to connect to that shared library from the iTunes on your Mac.
posted by popechunk at 6:38 PM on March 17, 2006

That worked, thanks!
posted by apetpsychic at 6:44 PM on March 17, 2006

I know you've got an answer, but you may also be interested in this. I found this hint for mounting samba shares at boot time. I keep my mp3s on a read-only samba share for a few devices, and itunes on OSX has no trouble with this arrangement. No need to be running itunes on the server.
posted by pompomtom at 4:26 AM on March 18, 2006