I am grooming my music collection and trying to set up iTunes so that there is one central music repository on a shared drive. I'm running XP, we have a desktop and a laptop, on a wifi network. I assume that iTunes will not like if the same library database is opened on two machines at the same time, so I'm trying to basically set up two libraries with identical music (but perhaps different metadata). I haven't found much by googling, where people are running the same setup, except a mac user who runs a script that adds his whole music folder to the library every so often when itunes starts up.

has anyone done something like this? Can anyone point out how to write some similar script for a windows machine?

8/13/2007 10:08:18 AM

itunes allows you to share libraries, can you not just put all the music on one machine and connect to it?

8/13/2007 11:02:25 PM

does iTunes have to be open to share a library? not sure I want it running all the time.

8/14/2007 12:33:22 AM

not sure about multiple computers sharing one library, but i don't think it's a problem. you do need itunes open to share, unless you set up a server that acts like an itunes library. there's software out there to let you do it..

http://www.rustydust.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WinDaapd

Seems to work at first glance.

[Edited on August 14, 2007 at 1:10 AM. Reason : .]

8/14/2007 1:03:27 AM

The library file is separate from where the music is stored. Just tell all the copies of itunes to use the same shared folder as the itunes music folder. Each machine will maintain its own library xml file in the user's space.

Meta data is stored in the music file, so everyone will have the same metadata.


[Edited on August 14, 2007 at 3:04 AM. Reason : It already does what you want to do. Syncing playlists is extra work.]

8/14/2007 2:55:08 AM