My iPod has been out of action for a few months, so I’ve been looking into ways to access my MP3 collection remotely. I’ve managed to find several ways of accessing my MP3 collection remotely, so that I can listen to tracks stored on my home PC as long as I can connect to the internet.

Here are the methods I’ve found to access my MP3 collection remotely ranked Easy/Medium/Hard so that you can decide which is the best for you.

• AjooBlast

AjooBlast is a freeware application for Microsoft Windows that works as a server and player at the same time. All you have to do is install it on your home PC in ‘Server mode’ and add your MP3 folders to AjooBlast and setup a password. Then install AjooBlast on your second PC in ‘Player mode’ and the tracks are played within the player using P2P – they aren’t even downloaded, so it is very fast.

If you give your home IP address and your password to friends they can listen to your music as well. If you don’t know how to get your IP address the easiest way to do this is to go to www.whatismyip.com.

Difficulty: Medium

Rating: 3/5

More: AjooBlast

• Avvenu Music Player



Avvenu lets you remotely access and share files stored on your PC, which of course also includes your mp3 files. Once installed on your PC, you can use the browser-based music player, to access individual tracks and even your iTunes playlists. You can access individual playlists or sort by genre, album or artist. The player also supports repeat and shuffle play and lets you share playlists with other Avvenu users.

Beware though. It is still in beta and only 250 songs can be accessed. Lifehacker also had difficulties getting it to work.

Difficulty: Easy

Rating: 2/5

More: Avvenu Music Player

• MP3tunes

I featured MP3tunes at the end of last month. MP3tunes allows you to upload and stream your own mp3 files, and since last month they are now offering unlimited storage and music streaming. Once you’ve registered you need to download the very easy to use Oboe Sync application which uploads your music to the MP3tunes server. If you have a big collection then be prepared to wait a while.

But, once this is done MP3tunes is a breeze to use. All you have to do is logon to the Mp3tunes site to be able to play your music. MP3tunes even has an embedded flash music player so you don’t even need iTunes or Windows Media Player to be installed – ideal for work.

Difficulty: Medium

Rating: 2/5

More: MP3tunes

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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.

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