Listening to Music Being Shared with You

Two steps are required to listen to music being shared with you. The first one, which must be done only once, is to tell iTunes to look for any music being shared with you. The second one is to access and listen to that music.

Accessing iTunes Music Being Shared with You

To have iTunes look across the network and identify music that is available to you, open the Sharing pane of the iTunes Preferences dialog box (see Figure 21.3). Then, check the Look for shared music check box and click OK.

Figure 21.3. When the Look for shared music check box is checked, iTunes will look for any music being shared with you.

When you return to the iTunes window, you will see music that is being shared with you on your Source List.

If only one source of shared music is available, you will see the name of that source with a set of dark blue boxes and a musical note as its icon. Click the expansion triangle next to that source to see the playlists being shared with you. Select the source to see all the music in its Library.

If more than one shared source is available, you'll see the Shared Music source instead (see Figure 21.4).

Figure 21.4. Because the source called Shared Music is on its Source List, you know that this computer has access to at least two sources of shared music.

The Shared Music source will have an expansion triangle next to it. Click this triangle to expand the Shared Music source to see each of the music sources being shared with you. Likewise, click the expansion triangle next to each source of shared music to view the playlists being shared with you (see Figure 21.5).

Figure 21.5. Under the expanded Shared Music source, you can see that two computers are currently sharing music with this machine; the source called Windows Music has been expanded so you can view its contents.

If a music source requires that you provide a password to listen to it, you will see the padlock icon in the lower-right corner of the source's icon. If you see this icon, you'll need to know the password for this source before you can listen to its music.

Listening to Shared iTunes Music

To listen to shared music, do the following steps:

1.	Select the source to which you want to listen by clicking its icon. Your computer will attempt to connect to that music source. note If only selected playlists on a source have been shared, when you select the source, you will see all the songs in the shared playlists rather than all the music in that machine's Library (which is what you see if the entire Library has been shared).
2.	If the source is protected by a password, you will be prompted to enter the password for that source. Do so and click OK. After you have entered the correct password, or if no password is required, the source's music will be shown in the Content pane (see Figure 21.6). Figure 21.6. The Windows Music source is selected and its songs appear in the Content pane; the playlists it contains are shown under its icon.
3.	If the shared source has one or more playlists, you can view the playlists for that source by clicking the expansion triangle next to the source's name. When it expands, you will see the playlists it contains.
4.	Select a playlist under the shared source, and its songs will be shown in the Content pane (see Figure 21.7). Figure 21.7. The shared source Windows Music has a number of playlists available; the Southern_Favs playlist is selected.
5.	Play music on the share source just like music in your Library by selecting it and clicking Play. Other playback tools, such as sorting the Content pane to change the order in which songs play, also work just they do when you are listening to the music in your Library. note It probably goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway: If the computer sharing music with you stops running or if iTunes on that computer is closed (such as when the user logs out), the shared music source will disappear and you will no longer be able to use it. If you share music with others, keep iTunes running as much as you can.