How to use Party Shuffle... at a real party, with real drunken idiots

September 15, 2006 1:55 AM

Is there any way to lock the iTunes "Party Shuffle" function into some kind of kiosk mode? So that drunken revellers can have some influence, but not do too much damage?

This can be either on Windows or Mac and I'm happy to use third party add-ons or play with the system settings, but iTunes would have to be the main software. (I guess something that looked and functioned almost exactly like iTunes would be okay, but many people are familiar with iTunes.)

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

With Mac:
Share your music over the network, just sharing the playlists you want to have available.

Make a new clean locked down account, and fast user switch to it leaving your other iTunes running.

Connect to the shared music, and play from there.
posted by edd at 2:37 AM on September 15, 2006

Response by poster: Interesting suggestion, but surely it isn't possible to do Party Shuffle from a shared streaming iTunes connection? Or am I misunderstanding?
posted by skylar at 3:21 AM on September 15, 2006

On Windows, Media Center has "Theater Mode", which is a full-screen album art + playback thing in a classic kiosk interface, and "Party Mode", which is more locked down and provides read-only access to the media library and playlists. It is password protected.
posted by meehawl at 6:13 AM on September 15, 2006

If you really need party shuffle I'd make the playlist of the songs you want available and drag them out of the iTunes window and drop them into the clean locked account's drop box (it'll be in their Public folder). Then import those in to iTunes and use it there.

Uses more disk space, and if you have purchased music you may need to authorise that account (remember to deauth it afterwards), but will get you all the features.

I would definitely go with only allowing access to some locked down guest account, and don't let them near your own.
posted by edd at 6:37 AM on September 15, 2006

I just tried edd's first suggestion, which is ingenious, but doesn't work. The party shuffle doesn't allow you to use a shared playlist as a source.
posted by adamrice at 8:38 AM on September 15, 2006

i'd buy a squeezebox. but that's just me.
posted by ascullion at 12:53 PM on September 15, 2006

Here's how you could prevent them from having any control: If you have a mac mini or something, you could just unplug the keyboard and mouse and take them away, use front row, and keep the apple remote in your pocket. Doesn't work so well if you don't have front row or have a laptop (unless you can figure out how to turn off the keyboard/trackpad).
posted by advil at 1:09 PM on September 15, 2006