How To Use The Same iTunes Library On A Home Network

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I bookmarked earlier this week what I thought was a good tip from Lifehacker, as it was going to solve a problem I wanted to solve with my iTunes music. Lifehacker gave very detailed and fairly complex instructions on how to share a iTunes library on a home network, so that the files can be shared and also ratings, artwork, playlists etc

Luckily, I didn’t implement the tip until today as one of Lifehacker’s reader posted an even simplier way to share iTunes music between PCs on a home network. All you have to do is the following:

1. On your the PC that holds all your music, navigate to the folder containing your iTunes library file. If you haven’t changed this, then this will be found in My Documents\My Music\iTunes. In there you should see a file called iTunes Library.itl.
2. You now need to share this folder on your home network. To do this right-click on the folder and select ‘Sharing and Security’ and tick both ‘Share this folder on the network’ and ‘Allow network users to change my files’
3. Now here comes the clever bit. On the the PCs where you want to access your iTunes library, start iTunes as normal but hold down the shift button.

   
   

4. The screen above will appear . Click on ‘Choose library’ and navigate to the folder you shared in step 2 and select the iTunes Library.itl file in that folder.
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 on any other PCs you want to share your iTunes library on

Now what will happen is when you launch iTunes on any PC at home it will access the same library file, which means not only will all your personal settings be displayed, but any changes will also be saved.

Read Related Posts

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3. Autorate iTunes Songs
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