How do I burn CDs from an iTunes library from a shared library on another computer

February 19, 2005 4:49 PM

Can I create mp3 CDs in iTunes using music from a shared library on another computer?

My husband and I are both running iTunes on our computers (his is running XP Pro, I am running XP Home, and we are both running iTunes 4.7.1.30). He has the majority of the music on his computer. We figured out the sharing stuff so we can play each other's music on either computer, but I can't seem to create a playlist on my computer and add music from his his computer to it. (Clicking and dragging his files to my playlist doesn't seem to work.)

Are we missing (or doing) something really stupid, or is it not possible to create CDs using music from another computer. (We are both new to iTunes, having both been longtime Winamp users.)

The easy answer would of course be to go into my husband's office, create the playlist on his iTunes and burn my CD from there, but then what would the point of sharing the music be?

Any advice will be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

posted by melissa to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)

Out of the box, iTunes will not let you copy or burn music found on the shared computers. It was designed solely so you can listen to the other person's library.

I say "out of the box" because some enterprising person could have written a hack or plug-in to enable you to record/burn the shared music. I'm on a Mac so I don't know if such a thing exists for Windows. Perhaps another Mefite knows that.
posted by birdherder at 5:08 PM on February 19, 2005

Best answer: The way to do this is to enable your husband's iTunes folder as a shared directory and then add the files from there to your library on the other computer (make sure "Copy added files into iTunes folder" is turned off), and you'll be able to do what you like with them. New songs added to the remote library won't of course appear in your library.
posted by cillit bang at 5:29 PM on February 19, 2005

Last year when I was in college dorms, I got a hack named "My Tunes" for my Windows computer to make MP3s from Itunes shared music. It was sorta cool, actually, since what it would do was start about 50 streams at different times into the song so you got the song in a few seconds rather than in the time it would take to play it. However, it would end up sticking parts of the next track on one track's MP3 and stuff like that, and I did get a few corrupted song files out of it, though I don't know what to fault there. Also, Apple went Gestapo on it so it is a little bit hard to find.

Best thing to do is Windows file share your songs, and then you could just copy the song files between your computers or you could add the shared directory itself to your Itunes library. The only reason I bothered with the My Tunes stuff was because more people were running Itunes than Windows file sharing.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 5:43 PM on February 19, 2005

Best answer: Another option would be to download the songs you wanted to burn from his library using myTunes Redux, and then to burn those from your computer to a CD. It would require you to step out of iTunes, though.
posted by esd at 5:44 PM on February 19, 2005

A similar program is the java-based ourTunes. Seems a bit simpler (and maybe with less features) than myTunes Redux, which I haven't tried.
posted by ALongDecember at 6:02 PM on February 19, 2005

as the author of myTunes, yes, it should work.
posted by null terminated at 11:44 PM on February 19, 2005

Response by poster: Thank you everyone for your ideas and explanations. I understand more how iTunes works now.

For now, I'm going to take the easy way out and doing the Windows sharing thing, because we already have sharing enabled. myTunes Redux does look very interesting (and I'm not just saying that because the author is reading this!), so I'm definitely going to keep that in mind as well. Thanks again.
posted by melissa at 7:14 AM on February 20, 2005