Share iTunes files?

July 30, 2005 2:46 PM

How can I share an iTunes library without using iTunes share?

I have loved and used the iTunes interface for several years now and have ripped my entire CD collection (almost a thousand CDs) for listening on my iPod and home network. My oldest son (8 YO) is now showing a keen interest in music and likes raiding my collection. The iTunes share facility *kind of* satisfies that need, but doesn't let him create favorites, playlists or burn his own compilations to CD.

I have an extensive home network and even have two W2K servers that serve all the users (myself, my wife and two sons - everyone on Macs), so I can easily centrally locate the music files, etc.., but would like to 'share' the iTunes database as well. I'm assuming that the iTunes database maintains album covers, playlists, etc..? I don't even know if this is possible as I can see some immediate issues such as record contention (two users trying to maintain the same song/album/record), etc..

BTW, all the music files are in MP3 format (no AAC or DRM'd files).

Sorry for the extreee long question. :-)

And no offense, but please spare me any fair-use rhetoric. I bought the dang music and will share it with anyone in my family that I see fit.

posted by Lactoso to Computers & Internet (10 answers total)

Record contention and network stability are the two biggest problems, I think. The database file is binary, so it's more likely that it could be corrupted over a network. As for record contention, database files are maintained locally, so you'd have to not only share the folder that contains the music files, but you'd also have to share the folder that contains the database file. This could probably be done with aliases and whatnot, but, with W2K, you'd probably be using Samba, I wouldn't trust OS X's implementation for a file that, if corrupted, has to be rebuilt from scratch, not to mention that CD burning probably won't work very well.

These are just the thoughts I've had while trying to solve it for myself. I've never actually experimented with it because I'm pretty paranoid about corrupting the database file (so my assessment of OS X's Samba implementation could be wrong). As far as I can see, any solution would be a risky hack. Daisy-chaining a bunch of Firewire cables could work (up to 16 cables for about 230 feet), but then you'd have the problem of record contention again. You could make a backup of the database file and give it a whirl. Do tell if it works.
posted by bitpart at 3:14 PM on July 30, 2005

From my own experience, you can share the "iTunes Music" folder, and iTunes can be pointed to it on each machine, but it doesn't like to share the actual database, as stores the database in two files, found in "My Documents/My Music/iTunes", and I haven't found a way to change that pointer. As far as backing up the database, you could try something like Rsync to synchronize the files, but that may be overkill.
posted by sysinfo at 3:22 PM on July 30, 2005

There don't exist any good solutions for sharing the database. The best you can do is set your iTunes Music folder up as a shared folder, and drag all the files over to your son's copy of iTunes, making sure (or not) that "Copy imported songs to iTunes folder" is turned off in the preferences.
posted by cillit bang at 3:23 PM on July 30, 2005

Whoop, submitted too early. (And I'm not sure how I let myself type that run-on sentence.) As far as the rsync setup goes, MacOSXHints has a guide to syncing iTunes with rsync. or try something like syncOtunes, though I've never tried it myself.
posted by sysinfo at 3:29 PM on July 30, 2005

In my experience, there's not really any ideal solution. I've got my iTunes pointing to a shared network drive that my husband also uses. (He's on Linux.) The only big problem is that if he rips any new songs, he has to let me know so I can manually add them to my library - otherwise I won't see them. I'd love some system that automatically went through a whole directory every night and added any missing songs. (The last time I did "Add to Library", it duplicated every single song. Has that been fixed? I'm reluctant to try it again for fear of it messing up again.)
posted by web-goddess at 3:52 PM on July 30, 2005

This has actually been discussed here before (can't find the thread right now), and I wound up shooting over to an applescript discussion forum at ipodlounge, where a guy named "deeg" pretty much wrote a script to my specifications; I blogged about it here.

As it happens, there are some conceptual problems with the script, and I've been meaning to pester deeg to work on them. But the problem of updating a second library can be more-or-less automated. Not sure if Tiger's whizzy Automator feature would be of any help.
posted by adamrice at 4:46 PM on July 30, 2005

Best answer: Assuming your oldest son is using a Mac of his own, he could copy tracks from your shared collection to his local machine using Blue Coconut. This obviously isn't the ideal solution, but it's really simple, and hard drive space certainly isn't expensive these days.
posted by istewart at 4:56 PM on July 30, 2005

Response by poster: Thanks everyone for your suggestions! istewart's Suggestion of Blue Coconut is a great interim solution for me. I've downloaded it, installed it and tried it out and it works great. This will allow my son to grab the songs he truly wants and do with them as he pleases.

It's just frustrating that Apple has made this really good music application, but have stopped short of implementing some very simple things to make it truly great. :-(

Does anyone know of a web page listing iTunes apps such as Blue Coconut & SyncOtunes? A Google of "iTunes utils" doesn't return either.

Thanks again all!

Cheers,
Ed T.
posted by Lactoso at 8:06 PM on July 30, 2005

Lactoso/Ed, Apple's site has a section for software related to iTunes and the iPod, here, and you might also try versiontracker (try categories Audio and Utilities).
posted by rob511 at 8:53 PM on July 30, 2005

DAAPD is an open source iTunes-intercompatible music sharing server, without any of the restrictions imposed by iTunes on how many people can connect to it.

mt-daapd is another implementation of the same thing.
posted by blasdelf at 9:15 PM on July 30, 2005