Macinstruct

Apple's iTunes will allow you to share your music over a wireless or local network (also called a LAN, or Local Area Network). Many people these days have more than one computer in their home, all of which are sharing Internet connections with a home router. This is a LAN, and it's all you need to connect to other computers' iTunes libraries and share your iTunes library.

To allow others to browse and listen to your shared music, just enable the sharing option in iTunes Preferences. Here's how to do it:

1. From the iTunes menu, select Preferences. Or just press the Command key (Apple key) and the "," key, which is the default keyboard combination for opening most Mac applications' preferences.

   
   
   

2. Select Sharing. Check the Look for shared libraries checkbox. iTunes will root around your home network for other running instances of iTunes that have sharing enabled. It will display their contents for you to listen to.

   To share your library, just check the Share my library on my local network checkbox. You can share your entire library, or just certain playlists -- it's up to you. If you want to require a password, check the Require password checkbox and type one in. This will prompt anyone connecting to your iTunes library for the password. The password is not connected to your Mac OS X system account in any way. You should choose an iTunes password that is different from your Mac OS X account password if you plan on using one.

   
   
   

3. Others will be able to listen to any music you have on your computer, with the exception of licensed content from the Apple iTunes Music Store. When you are sharing, people can only listen to your music -- it cannot be copied.

   When iTunes sees a shared library on your network, you'll see something like this in iTunes:

   

   You can play shared music like you play your own. Just double-click on a song to play it!

That's it! You're now sharing and listening to others' shared music.

Meet Your Macinstructor

Rob Watts is a recent Mac convert. He works with Visual Basic, ColdFusion and the command-line interface in Unix. He also develops his own Macintosh applications.