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[AndrewFG]

I apologise if this question is somewhat OT...

I have a situation where the household music library is on an HTPC, running MC, managed by me. I want it so that other household members can play music from/via MC, but nobody else is able to add to, modify or delete from, the music library in other ways. However, notwithstanding this, I want other household members to be able to use iTunes on their own PCs to load stuff from the MC library onto their various iThingies.

So the question is: is there some way to share the MC library with iTunes in a read only manner so people can load stuff from the MC library onto their iThingy, but not risk modifying the MC library in any way? (I think that normally iTunes chokes if it can't have read+write access to a library...)

[glynor]

iTunes is not compatible with MC's Library.

You can sync from the MC Library to iTunes with prod's plugin if you're clever.  This only works when syncing to a Local copy of iTunes, but you could conceivably then sync this folder out to the other PCs on a recurring basis.  So you'd have one "master iTunes" Library on the MC Server PC, which you probably never actually use, and sync that folder over to other machines using a third-party sync tool like GoodSync or something.  Prod's plugin can be set up so that MC's data is untouchable.  This means it will essentially "nuke" the iTunes library on a recurring basis, though.  So they won't be able to make playlists or anything like that at all.

I do something like this to sync my Library to iTunes once per day on my server in the basement, and then that iTunes Library gets synced up to the HTPC so my wife can plug in and sync her phone in the living room.  I use GoodSync to do the iTunes Library syncing.

You have to be pretty clever.

[AndrewFG]

You have to be pretty clever.

I feared that you might say that   and thank you anyway for the tips.

[glynor]

If you only want to sync to the iTunes Library on the PC that is running MC, that doesn't take too much cleverness, and Prod's plugin works fine.

The required cleverness is only for then syncing this to multiple separate PCs.  Of course, you might be able to just use the built-in iTunes Library sharing.  I'm not sure how that work, if at all, with sync to devices though.