Q: Home sharing not showing all songs and albums

Ok, I'll stand corrected.  I haven't noticed that issue, but I haven't looked for it either, and tend to stream only occasionally for relaxation, choosing albums randomly.  Nor do I use album art.  I did spend a lot of time tracking down the "multiple albums" issue, so thought I'd mention it in case it helps someone else.  And I wondered if at least a few of the problems reported above were actually the same thing.  FWIW, in the iPad music app, I've got "sort by artist" off and am using the Albums tab.  Under Settings>Music, I've got all options off.  In my WiFi settings, I've got the HTTP Proxy set to "off."  My PC is hard cabled into the WiFi modem.

I have experienced other of the reported frustrations, mainly where the sharing folder disappears from the iPad.  Or else it's there, but no track will play.  I get function back after shotgun trying many of the suggestions in this thread, so, yes, it sure would be nice if the iPad music app were more "troubleshooting aware."  Yesterday, for example, I had heck of a time getting the PC library to show on the iPad until I did something very simple: power cycled the iPad.  Bingo, there it was again.  This was after power-cycling the WiFi modem, re-logging into both iTunes and the iPad music app multiple times, renewing the iPad WiFi lease, etc. etc.

Still with all the inconvenience, I've yet to verify that a particular streamed album actually "loses tracks" without my having changed any communication parameter on either the PC or iPad.  Will keep eye out for that. 

This is good thread.  Thanks to all contributors.  -Ron

Useful info Ron.  But to say PC to ipad home sharing "does work" is really not correct.
 
It works for some of the time, and then eventually - usually after a few days - stops working and loses many/most of the albums and starts misplacing tracks and artwork.  This is not isolated to a few random people with unrelated issues, it is a consistent, reproducable problem.

Ok, *now* I've experienced the nonsense.  After editing the album artist field for a bunch of albums in the PC library, the number of albums showing in the ipad music app is hugely reduced.  Doh!  Back to jumping through hoops.... -Ron

I have found a solution!  It works, at least for me.

Go and download the Ecoute app....brilliant...works on iOS 5 upwards and lets you access your iTunes library (and play from it) as if you were sitting in front of your main computer.

Oh heck...it doesn't.  It's picking up the library on my iPod rather than the main library.

I also have this problem with my IPod 4 running IOS6. Haven't found a solution, and none of those in this thread seem to work. However what has confused me is that on a secondary windows PC that is also enabled for sharing, displaying the library from the Primary PC goes without a hitch; it is only the IPod that has an issue. Having said that, using the Ipod to attach the ITunes library on the secondary PC also goes without a hitch!  The Primary PC is Windows 7, the Secondary Vista. Both are running the same version of ITunes (11.0.5.5). As many people have said previously 'come on Apple, get your finger out!', there's a big issue out here that shouldn't be beyond the techies ability to resolve.

Thanks for your post KnarlyKarly - seems like I gave up too soon! Tried this three times, but the fourth and last time rather than disconnect from the shared library BEFORE then turning off Home Sharing on the IPod under settings, I left Music attached to the library and disconnected under settings. When I returned to the Music app (which I had previously closed down) it still connected to the library even though I had clearly logged out (but still with the missing Albums/Artists). ! I then closed down Music again, went to settings, re-enabled sharing, went back to Music and this time when it connected all was well! Interesting to see how long this lasts, and whether it may be of help to anyone else who has tried everything with no success. As I said in an earlier post today - Come on Apple, GET YOUR FINGER OUT!!

I dont want to get too excited but iOS7 with Itunes 11.1 seems to work now.

I am quite familiar with this issue and I had all but given up on Home sharing and accessing my own music on my PC from my iPad as searching crashes after 3 characters.

I have used iOS7 music app with home sharing for a short while this morning after having upgraded to iTunes 11.1 and it all seems to work. Obviosly iOS7 is a completely rewrritten music app so I guess the developers did not fancy fixing this on pre iOS7 software when it would all be resolved when iOS 7 came out.

Lets hope it actually is fixed. Only time will tell.

Lets hear what other users experience is  on this.

Well I guess that's good news...at least for you ;-)

I don't like the GUI for iTunes 11 and so won't be upgrading to that.  It's even less suitable IMO for classical music than earlier versions.

And my iPod Touch won;t go beyond iOS 5.1.1

I have been using the Logitech Media Server aka SqueezeCenter on my iMac and iPeng on the iPod Touch. iPeng is a brilliant application and provides so much more functionality than the poor offering from Apple.

Good point Roger. I guess this is how Apple roll. Upgrade or suffer. There are a lot of features that are like this.

The newly aclaimed Airdrop feature in iOS7, which i thought might be very useful, is only available for all butt the very latest hardware models. Even my iPad 3 which is not that old wont be getting the feature.

It does make you quite sick really when they present the feature in a flashy presentation then left feeling a bit foolish for looking forward to it.

I only came back to this bug to check for old times sake. I have expected it still to be there but at least they made the effort to fix it.

I too have all but given up on using Apple for music sharing. Spotify is my music service of choice.

Apple better watch as I am very nearly a fan boy but I am now so jadded by stuff like this.

I would normally be be rushing into the office to show the guys the latest IOS features.. but tomorrow I think I'll give it a miss. Most of them are now totally switched off Apple if I ever show an allegiance they almost laugh at me.

LOL! Man I remember Moaning  about theses type of problems with Windows products, and Windows Media player. Doesn't this BS (like incorrect album art, or missing album art) remind anyone esle of WMP? and Windows

Since posting my success with iPeng, I've broadened out its use in our home and introduced RogerFM!  The BBC has seen fit to dumb down Radio 3 (the classical station) to something resembling a mix of tweets, texts, emails and generally banal listener contributions such as 'the music I like to floss my teeth by is....'.  So I no longer bother to listen to it but I need something while cooking.

So now use a small USB FM transmitter plugged into the iMac.  Use SqueezePlay which is the player component that runs on the iMac itself.  Now using iPeng on my iPod Touch in the kitchen, I can control SqueezePlay and so broadcast my music down to the FM system in the kitchen.  Bit clunky but it works.

Hello anyone,

I recently bought an iPad Air (iOS 7.3), and tried using the Remote.app (latest) to control iTunes 11.1.1.  I couldn't find any of my music except a few Cloud songs.  I could not figure out why???

Then by chance, I discovered that in iTunes> Preferences/Advanced/iTunes Media Folder Location that the path was set wrong.  It was the standard HDD/user/Music/iTunes Media/ path.  When I changed it to where I store my library (external HDD, me/my music etc.), bam! all my songs were available again.  Whew! 

Note that all my songs always played in iTunes, despite using several directories. The library was created from drag and drop.

Hope this helps at least one person from pulling the rest of their hair out.

Your steps worked for me, thanks!

There are a lot of very complicated and long winded solutions suggested in some of these posts but I've just solved the issue very straightforwardly. Firstly, let's make sure we're talking about the same issuse: I burned a CD to iTunes on my MacBook Pro and it appeared in the library. I had home sharing enabled on both my MacBook and iMac, so expected to find the album listed in the iMac library and it wasn't. I tried a number of troubleshooting fixes but none worked, until I did the following. For the avoidance of doubt, we'll call the MacBook the master and the iMac the slave, as the MacBook is the machine that I burned the album to. Before starting this process, ensure that the master machine is on and iTunes is open.

1. Ensure that home sharing is enabled on both machines.
2. Go to the view tab on the slave machine and enable show side bar.
3. This changed the view on the library and displayed a section called my name's library.
4. It automatically started copying my library from the master and the missing album appeared.
5. Select the album and click the > icon, which will give you the option of importing the album.

If you do not import the album, it will disappear from the slave's library as soon as you shut the master machine down, as the slave will simply be a mirror image of the master's library.

We are not talking about the same thing.

The instructions you provide may well help someone with something, but have nothing to do with the point of this thread, which is people using home sharing to play content on one device - e.g. an ipad - that is contained in an iTunes library on another machine.  You seem to be talking about copying files from one machine to smother, which is something entirely different.