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iCommune for iTunes Shares Over Network

Posted by pudge on from the sweeeeet dept.

James G. Speth writes "I just released a free public beta of iCommune, a plug-in for iTunes that enables music sharing over the network. Your friends' music libraries appear in the iTunes source list. You can browse their collections, and choose to download or stream their music. It also allows you to make your own music library available to others." It's a bit buggy, but it is a beta. It shows a lot of promise. It also comes with an indexer (in Python, though I might write my own in Perl :-) so you can share MP3s to iTunes clients outside of iTunes on the server end (such as from a Linux box, in theory).

6 of 46 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Didn't Stebe Demo this? by 1+(smarterThanYou) · · Score: 3, Informative

    The Rendezvous-enabled version of iTunes isn't out yet. Steve enjoys flaunting unfinished software that people drool over...like he's been doing with recently released Keynote, the presentation software he's been using at these conferences for almost a year now. I've only heard speculation as to the release of this new rendezvous enabled iTunes which people seem to think will be sometime before summer.

  2. Re:Rendezvous developer question by tobes · · Score: 3, Informative

    Not yet, right now you can only use Apple's implementation with Obj-C Cocoa. The spec is open though, so it would be nice to see someone make a pure Java version.

  3. Re:Rendezvous developer question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Over at O'Reilly's there's a 2 part article about incorporating Rendezvous in Cocoa apps:
    Incorporating Rendezvous into Your Cocoa Applications, Part 1

  4. iCommune is not rendezous enabled it looks like by terevos · · Score: 2, Informative

    Besides the fact that I followed all the instructions for iCommune and it doesn't seem to work. This product doesn't seem to be Rendezous enabled.. doesn't seem that useful. Apple will come out with something much better soon I'm sure.

    1. Re:iCommune is not rendezous enabled it looks like by extra88 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Yeah, the Rendezvous thing Steve demoed last summer was great but unless your friends are also your roommates (or you live in a dorm with them), Rendezvous isn't going to do anything for you, it's only going to find servers on the same LAN as you. iCommune lets you access iTunes libraries anywhere on the Internet.

      I'm curious to know what protocol this plug-in is using. HTTP? AppleShare? This also makes me wonder about the security implications.

      As for the RIAA, as long as iCommune works in such a way that the people at the other end really are "friends" and not "some anonymous asshole," it can probably avoid the fate of Napster et al. It would also help its case if it dropped the download feature and only streamed. I don't think downloading and keeping copyrighted files from a friend's library is legal or ethical but streaming them would be.

  5. Try Edna instead? by djupedal · · Score: 4, Informative

    "Edna allows you to access your MP3 collection from any networked computer. This software streams your MP3s via HTTP to any MP3 player that supports playing off a remote connection (e.g. Winamp, FreeAmp, Sonique, XMMS)."

    A Python stand alone that will index music files and serve up dynamic pages...keeps stats too. Very nice :)