How to Share Tracks in iTunes 4
With all the attention going to the iTunes Music Store, most users have overlooked one of iTunes 4's best features - the sharing of playlists over a LAN with Rendezvous. If more than one Mac is on your network, each with their own collection of mp3s, iTunes can "auto-discover" the other machines and automatically add their libraries as a unique playlist (that is, if the other user enables sharing under their Preferences menu) to your application. If you work in an office environment with a room full of Macs, each user on the network can stream tracks from one potentially-huge pool of music.
But then comes the obvious question - if you want a friend to hear a particular track on your machine, how do you provide a direct link to it? Easy - if you right (or control) click on a track in your library, you'll see a "Copy Sharing URL" option. When selected, the URL is copied to your clipboard. You can then paste the url as a hyperlink in an intranet html document, or pass it through instant messaging or email.
The end user could then either click on the URL (if active) to automatically play the shared track in their copy of iTunes, or they could copy and paste the path into the "Connect to Shared Music" dialog box found under the "Advanced" menu.
Comments
You can also share music outside of your local network by simply putting the IP address of the remote machine in the dialogue box that comes up when you go to Advances > Connect to Shared Music... . I have not yet figured out how to share with a machine that doesn't have a real IP address (i.e. the G4 on my home network).
Posted by: Sunil at April 30, 2003 10:36 AM
One thing I found kind of odd is that you can't play apple-store-purchased songs from a shared library unless you're the authorized purchaser of them. Odd, because you're essentially streaming the songs, aren't you? There's no local copy. Can you burn remote songs to CD or make local copies of them?
Posted by: tomas at April 30, 2003 11:42 AM
dont forget if your behind a firewall to open up port 3689 for itunes. if your trying to get from work to let's say home just leav itunes running at home and then turn the sharing on. use your ip + :3689 and your set.
Posted by: drew at April 30, 2003 1:01 PM
Anyone know if people are starting to post Itunes4 music URL publicly and where?
Posted by: Ed at May 1, 2003 12:38 PM
Has anyone come across a way to see who is currently connected/listening to your shared music? How about a dynamic playlist of the most-remotely-accessed tracks in your library? It'd be pretty simple I guess to verify if someone is connected, but how much detailed info (song, album, time, etc) can you get?
Posted by: Beastmaster at May 1, 2003 1:29 PM
How do I download a song that is shared. I've found that I like a lot of songs that other people have that I don't have, but I can only listen to them when the songs are being shared...How can I download these songs?
Posted by: Bigfan at May 6, 2003 5:41 PM
Beastmaster, http://www.shareitunes.com lists people who are sharing out their music.
Bigfan, you cannot download the songs from shared libraries. As it is streamed you can only listen to them and not make copies on your own machine.
Posted by: Anthony at May 8, 2003 7:13 AM
Re: Bigfan
If you *really* want a local copy, get "Audio Hijack", which will record the audio output from any app to an MP3 file, great for ripping streams, but unfortunately it'll get messed-up if iTunes has to rebuffer, so it's only any use on a fast connection. Hope this helps!
Posted by: Lloyd at May 10, 2003 7:29 AM
There's a new site at www.ituneshare.org that allows you to bookmark favorite sites and search via location and connection speed.
Posted by: Ben at May 13, 2003 10:23 AM
hey i just thought i would add to this discussion. i heard a rumor of a new piece of software that would automatically rip a shared itunes stream to mp3, but im not sure what its called or even if it exists for sure. i just heard about it from another "itunes share ip" websight that had to shut down due to moral oposition to this new software and the ability of its users to "steal" music. ok if anyone hears anything let us know please!
Posted by: chuck at May 13, 2003 8:15 PM
try http://www,shareitunes.com u can share all your songs online using itunes4.
Posted by: Kevin O'sullivan at May 15, 2003 11:54 PM
A follow up on some comments I had made before:
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20030430141817856#comments
Posted by: Beastmaster at May 27, 2003 1:06 PM
You can now use iLeech or iSlurp to download the files. You have to go to the Terminal in OSX and use netstat -n and look up the numbers on your port to see who you're streaming from and then input that number (minus the port) into iLeech and voilą! Slurp, slurp, slurp.
Posted by: Gib at July 27, 2003 5:26 PM
I was wondering if there is anyway to see who exactly is listening to your shared music on a large network like at a college?
Posted by: Jordan at December 8, 2003 5:43 PM
ileech and islurp are crapy programs Gib. Get tunes is the best of all of these programs. It takes about three secounds for one song.
Posted by: mike at February 27, 2004 10:19 AM
ileech and islurp are crapy programs Gib. Get tunes is the best of all of these programs. It takes about three secounds for one song.
Posted by: mike at February 27, 2004 10:20 AM
oh and Lloyd audio hijack is the worst program ever.
Posted by: Mike at February 27, 2004 10:24 AM
ileech and islurp are crapy programs Gib. Get tunes is the best of all of these programs. It takes about three secounds for one song.
Posted by: mike at February 27, 2004 10:25 AM
how do i get "get tunes"?
Posted by: cristina at April 13, 2004 6:13 PM
Try searching for "gettunes" in google.
Anybody have any ideas for us Windows users? Unfortunately with the 4.5 iTunes upgrade, the only piece of software (myTunes) doesn't work any more. I haven't been able to find anything on the source code of it or another program like it.
Let me know if you have any ideas!
Posted by: JJ at May 24, 2004 10:24 PM
