iTunes Music Sharing vs Home Sharing

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Level 1

41 points

iTunes Music Sharing vs Home Sharing

I am trying to set up my home network to have the iMac share its' media library via iTunes, and access that media on other devices in the home. I would like to use iTunes Music Sharing, which is a very simple setup on the iMac and doesn't require any Apple ID to be entered on the devices accessing the shared library. However, I have found that the iPhone and iPad will not even see the shared media library when the iMac is set up to share its' library.

Only when I enable Home Sharing on the iMac, and configure Home Sharing on the iPhone and iPad, do I see the shared library available on those devices.

I would like to allow other family members in the household to access the shared media library without requiring them to have my Apple ID and password. iTunes Music Sharing is supposed to allow this.

Does iTunes Music Sharing not work when trying to share to an iPhone or iPad?

-rb

iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.4), Using iTunes 10.6.3 (25) on iMac

Posted on Jul 4, 2012 9:27 AM

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Answer 1

Limnos

Level 10

428,159 points

Jul 4, 2012 9:32 AM in response to RBNetEngr

I don't know what is possible on ipads, etc. Maybe it says in the links below.

Music sharing and Home Sharing are not the same. HS lets other people transfer content. MS lets them stream content from a host computer but not download it.

iTunes: How to share music and video - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2688 - about Music Sharing and Home Sharing

iTunes: Setting up Home Sharing on your computer - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4620

Music Sharing - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2688

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Answer 2

Chris CA

Level 10

82,513 points

Jul 4, 2012 9:59 AM in response to RBNetEngr

RBNetEngr wrote:

I would like to allow other family members in the household to access the shared media library without requiring them to have my Apple ID and password.

You can turn on Home Sharing on their devices instead of giving them the password.

Does iTunes Music Sharing not work when trying to share to an iPhone or iPad?

Yes it does not share to iDevices.

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Answer 3

RBNetEngr Author

Level 1

41 points

Jul 4, 2012 10:04 AM in response to Chris CA

Chris,

Thank you for the confirmation about Music Sharing and iDevices. Kinda *****...

I suppose that this is to facilitate pulling content from the iTunes shared library to the iDevice, rather than just streaming it and not storing it locally, but it doesn't make sense to me. Oh well.

-rb

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Answer 4

RBNetEngr Author

Level 1

41 points

Jul 4, 2012 10:14 AM in response to RBNetEngr

After Chris posted his reply I found the following Apple support document:

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4557

It doesn't say the iTunes Music Sharing WON'T work with an iDevice, but it does say that you need to enable Home Sharing to stream music to an iDevice, which implicitly says that Music Sharing doesn't work.

-rb

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