You can use Home Sharing on iTunes to build an iTunes Server! Feature request something enough and eventually it happens. Now that Apple has given us this great new feature how do you use it? First, authorize iTunes (if it isn’t already). To do so go to the computer that you will be sharing the library from, the Home Media Server if you will and click on the Store menu from within iTunes and then click on Authorize Computer.
Next, enable Home Sharing. Click on the new Home Sharing icon in the iTunes side bar (under SHARED) and then provide the iTunes Account ID and password for the account you’ll be using to share the library. Then click on Create Home Share. Then click on Done.
Now that Home Sharing has been enabled, click on the iTunes menu from within iTunes and then click on Preferences. From the Preferences panel, click on Sharing and then use the checkbox to Share my library on my local network. Once shared, setup some access controls – choose whether to Share entire library or only Share selected playlist. You can also use the checkbox to Require Password to access the shared libraries. At the reminder that “sharing music is for personal use only” click on OK.
Now go to a client of your Home Sharing server. Here, in the SHARED menu you should see a list of Home Sharing servers that your computer can see on the network. Click on one and then you should be prompted for a password (if you chose to use a password on the Home Sharing server). Then open up the Music menu. where you’ll see the list of songs as you did before updating to iTunes 9. But you should also now have a contextual menu item to Copy. You’ll also see a contextual menu item for Show in Playlist. These allow you to pull down items shared from other systems. Not a lot of earth shattering new features introduced. You’ve been able to share and access playlists and full libraries for some time. But now you can copy content down in order to listen to it while the Home Sharing server is not on the network. Assuming that you’ve authorized for listening to songs in the shared library you can copy the content down and listen to it. Given most people don’t have more than 5 machines this is good enough for most.
