iTunes Tip #48
I love Pandora, use it a lot to listen to music at work or when I am in a hotspot. But sometimes nothing is better than to listening to your OWN music. iTunes makes it easy to share your music and videos in your home. But falls short of allowing you to enjoy your iTunes library when you are at work or on the road and your main iTunes library is sitting on your computer at home. There are several methods available that will allow you to listen to your “home” iTunes library when you are not home.

I have a Slingbox connected to my Apple TV. That is one way. But you need to have SlingPlayer installed to listen. Here is a free method for enjoying iTunes from any web interface anywhere, from any computer.

Here’s how:
Download MyTunesRSS. There is a Windows and a Mac version available. MyTunesRSS is donationware, so if you like it donate.

The MyTunesRSS website explains the software pretty well so I reprint it here:
MyTunesRSS allows you to access the music and videos from your iTunes library or any simple watch folder over a local network or even the internet. You can access your music from all over the world using a simple web browser. The user interface lets you search for titles for browse your whole library by album, artist or genre. You can access your iTunes playlists or create new ones directly in MyTunesRSS.

Download single tracks or play them right inside your browser. Or do you want to download a complete album, all tracks from one artist or the contents of a playlist to your local computer? No problem with MyTunesRSS. You can also download an M3U playlist and play them in Windows Media Player, iTunes, VLC, WinAmp or any other player capable of playing such playlists. Get a playlist as an RSS feed on your computer and stay up-to-date to the contents all the time. Enjoy cover images from the tracks if available in the files and supported by the RSS reader. Listen to your music via RSS feeds on many devices like the Playstation Portable with the latest firmware version.

Setup
Setup of MyTunesRSS is really pretty easy and straightforward. Download the software, install it, create a user account, make sure to open your firewall and set your home router for port forwarding on the default port 8080 (or any other port you want to set it to).

On Mac OS X machine’s you will want to “open” for your built-in firewall to receive traffic (not so different for Windows or third-party firewalls. Just go to Apple menu -> System Preferences -> Sharing -> Firewall tab.

OS X Firewall

Click “New” button. Click on drop down for “Port Name” and choose “Other.”

Firewall Other

Type in TCP and UDP port numbers (8080 if using the default) and type in MyTunesRSS in “description” field, click OK. Firewall done.

Firewall Port Number

Setting your home router is a bit different for each model router, just check the router’s documentation. You just want to allow incoming traffic to be “port forwarded” to the computer on your LAN running MyTunesRSS (usually on port 8080).

The MyTunesRSS software runs a small server application allowing your Mac or Windows machine to act as a specialized web server. The lightweight application runs on your computer allowing you to access your music and video from any web browser on any broadband connected computer.

Once installed and you get your firewall and router to allow your access your machine from the web, you just type-in your “public IP address” plus the port number (8080 usually) in a web browser, log in using the username and password you selected when you created an account in MyTunesRSS. Of course you can bookmark this.

MyTunesRSS Login
You will then be presented with all your iTunes playlists. You can browse, search, and even create your own playlists.

MyTunesRSS Playlists

MyTunesRSS allows you to play your selections in a browser (some protected files may not play this way), download as many tracks as you like to your local computer or download an M3U playlist that can be played in iTunes on your local computer. This is cool because iTunes will save these connections for playback at a later time. Also if all your iTunes connect is protected, that is bought from the iTunes store it will play fine as long as the local machine is authorized with the same iTunes account (Apple allows five machines at a time).

ITunes M3U Playlist

MyTunesRSS will allow you to also play tracks in Windows Media Player, VLC, WinAmp or almost any other capable player.

Public IP Address
You will need to know your ISP provided public IP address to access MyTunesRSS running on your home machine. This is the IP address your ISP dynamically assigns to your broadband connection so you can access the Internet. This is NOT the local IP address that may be assigned by the DHCP server running on your router. The local one usually is a non-routable one that is usually 192.168.1.xxx or 10.1.1.xxx. The public IP address is pretty easy to get. Usually you can get it off your home router, located with the WAN (Wide Area Network) information.

Most people do not have static IP addresses, meaning that your ISP provided IP address is “pooled” and could change if your router or cable modem is rebooted. Most ISP change this IP address pretty rarely. I HIGHLY recommend using DynDNS, a free service that makes it easy to detect your new IP address if your public IP address ever changes. They will give you a domain name that you can use with the port number to access your machine, so you do not have to worry about IP addresses or if they changed or not.

DynDNS also will give you a Dashboard Widget to check your Public IP address is a flash!

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