iTunes is a amazing application for both the Mac and PC. It is built to be a very user friendly program and achieves that goal well.  The UI is simple and without very much digging, the user can get to his desired destination. Today, I’m going to explain how to do something with iTunes that requires going deeper into the program that you have before.

As in many homes, I have a fairly large collection of music on a PC dedicated almost exclusively to media. In addition, there are other computers around the house on a wireless network. In our house, we had collections of music on each of the computers, and iPods were being synchronized with different computers. In some cases, a song or podcast would be downloaded from iTunes on one computer, but users of other computers would not have access to that file. My solution to this predicament is to wirelessly broadcast or share the media on the main media PC to all the computers on the network. This is incredibly easy to do and takes almost no time at all. Here’s how:

1)      Launch iTunes on your media host computer or server.

2)      Press CTRL + , on Windows or Command +, on Mac to launch the Settings pane. (This can also be done by clicking Edit>Preferences)

3)      Switch to the tab marked “Sharing”

4)      Check off “Share my library on my local network”. The check box next to “Look for shared libraries” is optional, but on a host PC you probably don’t need it.

5)      Click “OK”.

Now, on another computer, launch iTunes.  In the sidebar you should see a new section called “Shared” and under that, a music library called YOUR USERNAME’s Library by default. The name can be changes by launching the Preferences windows, navigating to the “General” tab, and changing the value in the text field marked “Shared Name”. This system is not flawless because the host PC needs to be on with iTunes running for people to access the library and the music is not available to access off the network, nor can you, as far as I know, sync your iPod with any computer but the host. Still, I found that this solution worked well for my needs.