I’m using Sonzea’s Syncopation to sync my iTunes library across multiple computers. It works great for keeping the music and metadata in sync. However, it doesn’t sync the artwork the way I would like. It can’t read artwork from iTunes’ database, but it can read artwork that’s embedded in the music file. I’ve used Equinix’s CoverScout to embed the artwork in the file and Syncopation will sync it if there is no existing artwork embedded in the file on the other computer. I’d like to be able to update existing artwork embedded in the files.

A bit more background ... I manage my music on my Mac Pro (cleaning up genre, year, and other metadata), then sync it out to the other computers. At times, I replace the original artwork with higher quality images. I could simply rebuild the other computers’ libraries from scratch to get all of the artwork updated, but that’s not a fun proposition with ~30,000 songs and 3 Macs to sync to.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

FYI. All Macs are 10.6.2 with iTunes 9.0.3.

- Leon

As you have iTunes 9.0.3, wouldn’t Home Sharing be of any use?

HitchHiker - 05 March 2010 03:31 AM

As you have iTunes 9.0.3, wouldn’t Home Sharing be of any use?

Thanks for the suggestion, but Home Sharing doesn’t have the sync capability I need. It allows me to copy iTunes purchases to other computers, but it doesn’t sync information about existing music. I have songs on multiple computers. I update metadata (clean up titles, change artwork, etc.) on one computer and want to sync these changes to the others. Home Sharing won’t do that.

- Leon

I am fixing to get ready to put my iTunes library on a hard drive connected to my AirPort. Maybe that would be work for you.

Currently all the Macs here use a shared library on my iMac, but if I am shut down or iTunes is not running then other users on the network can not get to their music.

My wife and I use my iTunes account to buy stuff. The downside to this is that Genius suggests items for me based upon my wife’s purchases, no I don’t want something similar to the soundtrack for the movie Mama Mia.

I “share” my iTunes across two users on an iMac (my wife and me) and the media content is on shared Network Attached Storage (NAS), a Netgear ReadyNAS Pro Pioneer to be specific. This would work the same across multiple computers as it does across multiple users on one computer.

Why do this you may ask? The answer is to support MobileMe synching. My wife and I use iPhones and although we want to share the same media repository (music, video, apps, etc). across users, Our contacts, calendars, and email are different so we have two MobileMe accounts (one per user). I don’t want to synch iTunes because that just doubles the amount of storage and introduces the need for synching… no thanks.

This solution is far from ideal though, iTunes can only be opened from one account at a time. When it comes time to synch my iPhone, I normally just shut down iTunes on my wife’s account, start it on mine, synch, shutdown iTunes on my account and start it again on hers.

I used to have the whole of iTunes library files and content on the NAS but this occasionally caused problems when the NAS went offline and on occasion iTunes would show only a partial library… kinda weird that the library would be partial and not empty, however the resolution was simple by restoring the library from the iTunes “previous libraries” folder. To prevent this occasional blip, I moved my library file to the local disk and kept the content on the NAS.

Back to point… I think it’s high time iTunes became more software server based so multiple iTunes could access the same library simultaneously. I like home-sharing but that’s if you want multiple libraries and that’s not what I want. I want multiple users/computers to share an iTunes library so that updates from one user is reflected across all users. 

Thoughts anyone? Got a better idea? I’d really like to make my setup work better.

I’ve thought of using a single library with all computers sharing it, but as spudgeek pointed out, it restricts you to one user at a time running iTunes. I’ve also found that syncing to my iPod from a NAS-based library takes much longer, even though my network is gigabit.

The other nice thing about Syncopation is that I can selectively sync information. I sync everything from my Mac to the Mini I use as a media server, but I don’t sync playlists or ratings to my partner’s Mac so he can keep his own playlists and ratings, but still get the updated track tags.

I’m starting to look at SuperSync, but I’m having trouble connecting to remote libraries.

- Leon