Managing a central repository of music with iTunes

[xtophercaa]

I have a PC with 100 GB of music in iTunes. Now that I have a MacBook Pro, I'd like to remotely manage that music collection (rather than moving it all to the MBP and dominating the hard drive). What are some good strategies to using iTunes as a client and having all the music files stored remotely on a networked PC.

Ultimately, I'd like to be able to import music occasionally on my MacBook Pro (or buy songs in iTunes on it) and have them find their way to the big music library I already have.

Plus, I'd like to sync my iPod from my MBP but let it use songs on the big library.

Any thoughts...?

--C.

 

[trpnmonkey41]

Alrighty heres how I would do it assuming you have already gotten the computers networked so they can see each other and their files

Connect to the PC from the Mac and locate the iTunes directory
Create an Alias of the iTunes Library file and iTunes Music Library.xml file (Usually located in My Documents/My Music/iTunes)
On your Mac delete the iTunes Music Library.xml file and iTunes Library file and replace them with the aliases that you just created
Now when you open up iTunes you should see your Library and playlists exactly as they are on your PC.
Now we need to tell the MBP to set all music to go to the PC directory
Go to iTunes -> Preferences -> Advanced -> General and set your iTunes Library Location to the iTunes folder on your PC

 

[xtophercaa]

Very cool. I will try this tonight. My Mac just arrived today, but this is one of the first things I wanted to try out on my home network.

At home, we already use iTunes as our central music database on our PCs, and it's shared--so our laptops just connect to it so we can listen. But to sync our iPods, my wife and I have to do it at the "console" iTunes PC.

Cool...I'll let you know how it works!

--C.