- Browsing Through Your Library
- Searching for Songs
- Sorting Songs
- Playing and Pausing Songs
- Moving Around in a Song
- Options for Playing Multiple Songs
- Accessing and Playing Podcasts
- Controlling Volume
- Listening to Radio Streams
- Viewing Artwork
- Accessing and Playing Video
- Rating Songs
- Sharing Your Music
- Playing Music from Others' Libraries
- Dealing with Firewalls
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Playing Music from Others' Libraries
Turning on sharing so that others can access your music is nice, but iTunes is much more fun when you can play other users' shared music libraries.
Shared libraries show up in an iTunes song list, so the person accessing the shared music can browse, search, and sort the songs, as well as view the full range of information associated with each song.
To view shared libraries:
- Look in your Source pane.
Any shared libraries should already be visible. (The icon for a shared library is similar to that for your iTunes library and the Music Store except that it's blue.)
If there's one shared library on your network, you'll see it listed in your Source pane (
Figure 3.47
).
If multiple people on your network are sharing, you'll see a Shared Music entry in your Source pane, with the different libraries listed below that ( Figure 3.48 ).
Figure 3.47 A single shared library on your network appears like this.
Figure 3.48 Multiple shared libraries on your network make your iTunes experience much more exciting.
- If you don't see any shared libraries, and you know there are people on your local network who are sharing, open the Preferences window, and on the Sharing tab, make sure that "Look for shared music" is checked (
Figure 3.49
). (This is the default setting.)
Figure 3.49 If you see no shared libraries, make sure that your Sharing preferences are set to "Look for shared music."
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To connect to a shared library:
- Click the name of a shared library in the Source pane.
- If the owner of the shared library has required a password, you are prompted to enter it (
Figure 3.50
). (Without the password you won't be able to get any further.)
After a second or so, the songs in the shared library appear in your Detail pane; you can play them as you play the songs in your own library. Assuming the shared library has playlists, a disclosure triangle appears to the left of the shared library entry ( Figure 3.51 ).
Figure 3.50 When you try to connect, you may be asked for a password. The owner of the shared library will give this to you if they want you to have access.
Figure 3.51 A disclosure triangle indicates that you've connected to a library with playlists. (The songs listed in the song list are all those that the owner of the shared library wants to share and that are shareable.)
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To access playlists in a shared library:
- Click the disclosure triangle next to a shared library entry in the Source pane to show the playlists in that library that are shared (
Figure 3.52
).
Figure 3.52 When you click the disclosure triangle, you see the playlists that the owner of the library has shared.
- Click a playlist name to see what's in that playlist.
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TIPs
- You can browse, search, and sort a shared library and its playlists just as you can your own songs.
- Playing songs is pretty much the same as playing from your own library except that when you try to change the current time in the song by dragging the diamond indicator, the time displays (elapsed and remaining time) don't update until you release the mouse button; this makes it difficult to find a precise time in the song.
- You can't drag any songs from a shared library or its playlists to your own iTunes library.
- If there are already five users that have connected to a shared library on the day you click it, a window appears telling you that the shared library is not accepting connections at this time (
Figure 3.53
).
Figure 3.53 If you try to connect to a shared library but five users have already connected today, you'll see a message like this.
- If the owner of a shared library requires a password, the icon for their library in the Source pane will have a tiny graphic of a locked icon (refer to figure 3.48).
- If you really don't want any sharing to go on, you can, in the Parental or Parental Controls tab of your Preferences window, select "Disable shared music" and lock that setting.
- Sometimes, you'll have problems seeing or connecting to a shared library because of firewall issues. See the last section of this chapter for more information on firewalls and iTunes.
- When you're browsing someone's shared iTunes library, you can select any song and get information about it (File > Get Info), but you can't change anything: You can't rate songs or edit information or even access the Artwork tab.
- You can view and access streams that have been placed in a shared library.
- The Search bar doesn't work correctly when looking at a shared library, at least as of this writing. If you ask it to show anything but All or Music (Podcasts, for example), it shows nothing, even though items that belong in the category selected appear when you choose All.
- To disconnect from a shared library, click the eject icon next to the shared library name in the Source pane or click the eject icon in the lower right of the iTunes window (
Figure 3.54
).
Figure 3.54 Click the Disconnect button at the lower right of the iTunes window to disconnect from a shared library.
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