Sharing a library at home

Question

What about the following scenario. A family builds up a common music library consisting of mp3 and other files on an external LAN disk accessible in read-only mode from family’s Macs and PCs. The library is maintained by a user with write access to the disk and using iTunes or other application. The size of this library is 1 TB or more. Now, all family members have installed iTunes on their Macs and PCs and want to refer to some of the files in the common library from their respective iTunes. Each user refers to a different but partially overlapping set of files. The files should not be copied because of maintenance problems, only fetched via LAN when needed. Each user wants also to establish a playlist to be synchronized with his iPod. Furthermore, the files are stored in the common library using high quality encodings but should automatically be converted to smaller sizes when syncing with iPods. Will this work at all? Will metainformation stored in the files in the common library including artwork, artist, title etc. be accessible to read-only users? The purpose of all this is to store all the CDs that the family owns by a common library on disk and bring some order into the chaos.

Answer 1

Gotta ask though, why are you so interested in the internal workings of iTunes?
Well, the short and philosophical answer is: why not?
A little longer answer is right there in my previous message:
Why these things aren’t explicitly documented in iTunes documentation under, say, “Information for advanced users”? Why do we have to guess and experiment for such trivial things? What’s so secret about it?
More elaborate answer follows.
First, I’m not particularly interested in the internal workings of iTunes. I’ve been working with hardware and software development for 30+ years now so I understand how iTunes software works and even its internal design if not for other reasons then because I know how I would design such software.
Second, my questions for information have nothing to do with any illegal use of anything, if this is what you aiming at. Everything I do is legal according to the laws of my country.
Third, I do believe that open world is better in every aspect and for every person and organization than closed one. Open in this context is not the same as free or non-copyrighted. I work with commercial software development so I understand these matters and I don’t have any problems with that because software is intellectual property too. I also use software from and I work in free software movement so I understand those aspects too. Development and business models of these 2 approaches can coexist and both are needed.
Fourth, if it weren’t for this kind of openness then Apple wouldn’t have an OS to build on today. With OSX they are using the results of open work of many, many people, organizations and years. When they switched then I thought that they finally got real OS and become more open. However what I see is that while they cannot close UNIX (because it’s not their software) they are closing more and more the software that they implement on top of it. By doing this they are not getting new customers but loosing them. BTW, their closeness is one of the main reasons of this David and Goliath situation that they are in from the very beginning.
Fifth, I do not regard file structure, contents and formats as “internal workings” of anything or anybody. A file is an external entity that software uses and every file should be fully documented. The software is not running on vendor’s computer but on mine. The machine was produced by the vendor but it is my machine and I have all the rights to know what is going on that machine and what the software does.
Sixth, this black box strategy is not helping me and others in my situation both at home and work. It is making my job and life more difficult and messy than it needs to be.
Seventh, if they think that they will sell more iPods, more Macs, or more music by not documenting iPod’s and iTunes’ interface (i.e. file structure) then they are in error. This strategy will render them less profit than otherwise. For example, one member of my family is using Macs in work and home and an iPod. We were thinking about purchasing iPods for the other members including myself. Because of the closeness and lack of documentation rendering heavily limited (to iTunes) functionality that will not happen. We were also thinking about iTunes as our primary media library manager mainly because it runs on 2 platforms and integrates well with iPod. Because of its closeness and purposely limited functionality we will select other software for the purpose. Unfortunately that software doesn’t run under OSX so our needs for Apple computers will be weaker now. The same is true for file format that we will use in our master library. Apple Lossless was an alternative but due to its closeness it probably will be FLAC which is open. It is also free but that is only a minor point.
Thanks/Mikael