4 iPods, 3 Macs, 1 PC and 3 Users. Anyway to create a central song library?

[vickishome]

I would like to create a central song library on my G5 which has the disk space to store ALL of the song files for my own Macs and my kids' Mac and PC. I would like to do this for backup purposes and also to keep tabs on the songs my kids are listening to.

Of course, I can see what songs they are listening to through the streaming shared music libraries, but that doesn't do anything for backup purposes.

And I can obviously directly connect to their servers and do a file copy to copy their song files over. However, that is very tedious as I would have to then manually figure out which songs are new so I won't be copying over their entire song libraries each time.

Also, I am finding that I sometimes buy songs from iTunes on my PowerBook and sometimes on my G5, and I would prefer to sync the two libraries so those songs can all go on my iPod automatically.

Is there any easy/automatic way to do any of this? Can iTunes itself be of any help (date added column?). What about a smart folder in the finder? Spotlight? Does anyone know of an applescript already written that can do this? Anything?

PS. Another complication to the whole mess is that 1 Mac and the 1 PC has multiple user accounts so if I really wanted to create a real central song library, I'd have to add that into the mix AND take into consideration song duplication issues.

Why do I have a feeling I'm going to get a "you can't do that" answer. ;)

[hayne]

I think there has been at least one article on the main macosxhints site about doing this sort of thing.
One way (likely the way recommended by that article) would be to set up a shared folder on your G5 and put all the music there. Then configure iTunes on each of the other Macs to use that folder as the music folder (see iTunes preferences).

[vickishome]

Thanks, hayne, I'll look for the hint. :)

But my first thought of that idea is that all the music would then be streaming from my G5, wouldn't it? If so, then my kids can't put their music on their iPods, and I wouldn't be able to carry my music with me on my PowerBook.

Perhaps I'm wrong. Or maybe I misunderstood you? I'm out of time right now to look up the hint you mentioned so maybe this is addressed in the hint when I find it.

[voldenuit]

But my first thought of that idea is that all the music would then be streaming from my G5, wouldn't it?
No, the Music folder just happens to live on an AppleShare Volume rather than a local disk.

[hayne]

But my first thought of that idea is that all the music would then be streaming from my G5, wouldn't it? If so, then my kids can't put their music on their iPods, and I wouldn't be able to carry my music with me on my PowerBook.

I was talking about having a shared folder on the G5 being mounted (as a remote disk) on all the other Macs. I.e. this is file sharing, not iTunes music sharing.

Obviously if you wanted to take your music with you on your PowerBook then the files would have to be on the PowerBook's disk. You could keep a copy of (a subset of) the files on your PowerBook for this situation. Or just get an iPod for when you travel.

[edalzell]

http://www.shirt-pocket.com/netTunes/netTunesDescription.html