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can i have my itunes library on 2 computers at the same?

i have a burning question thats needs a very thorough explination. i want my itunes library on my desktop and laptop so when i'm on my desktop i can listen to it on there and when i'm out and about i can listen to it on my laptop. if this possible can someone explain to me how it's done as i don't want to acidently wipe my library if you know what i mean.



thanks for all your comments in advance.

iPod touch, Windows 8, i got either the 3rd gen or 4th gen

Posted on Apr 3, 2014 9:36 PM

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11 replies

Apr 3, 2014 9:44 PM in response to north246

Hi north,


Is the music you want to listen to all music purchased via iTunes? If so, then it is easy enough to download that music onto your laptop:


- Open the iTunes app on the laptop and sign into the iTunes Store with the Apple ID you used to purchase the music


- Click on the Music tab then click on Purchased under Quick Links on the right of the screen


- Click on Songs or Albums (whichever you prefer) and on Not in this Library


You will then see your list of purchased music each song or album with a little cloud next to it. You can click on each cloud selectively, or you can click on Download All at the bottom.


We have two Macs in my house. The iTunes library we sync with is on one Mac, but I download all of my purchased music onto my Mac so I can listen to it when I want.


Cheers,


GB

Apr 6, 2014 11:24 AM in response to north246

I hope you don't mind me throwing a curve ball into this discussion... It should be a fairly simple matter to copy your library from one computer to the other. The tricky bit is keeping the two copies up to date with each other. I've written about this before, primarily with a view to being able to update devices from each computer, so perhaps this will be useful to you too.





Sync iPod/iPad/iPhone with two computers

Although it isn't possible to sync an Apple device with two different libraries it is possible to sync with the same logical library from multiple computers. Each library has an internal ID and when iTunes connects to your iPod/iPad/iPhone it compares the local ID with the one the device normally syncs with. If they are the same you can go ahead and sync...


I have my library cloned to a small 1Tb USB drive which I can take between home & work. At either location I use SyncToy 2.1 to update the local copy with the external drive. Mac users should be able to find similar tools. I can open either of the local libraries or the one on the external drive and update the media content of my iPhone. The slight exception is Photos which normally connects to a specific folder on a specific machine, although that can easily be remapped to the current library if you create a "Photos" folder inside the iTunes Media folder so that syncing the iTunes folders keeps this up to date as well. I periodically sweep my library for new files & orphans with iTunes Folder Watch just in case I make changes at one location but then overwrite the library with a newer copy from the other. Again Mac users should be able to find similar tools.


As long as your media is organised within an Tunes Media folder, in turn held inside the main iTunes folder that has your library files (whether or not you let iTunes keep the media folder organised) each library can access items at the same relative path from the library folder so the library can be at different drives/paths on different machines. This solution ensures I always have adequate backups of my library and I can update my devices whenever I can connect to the same build of iTunes.




In your case you could use a shared folder on one computer in place of the external drive, but you could use the SyncToy tool to keep the two folders in sync with each other rather than trying to do that part by hand which is almost impossible...


tt2

can i have my itunes library on 2 computers at the same?

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