How To Share Music Between Your Home PC and DJ Laptop
I have a Home PC and a DJ Laptop. I only use the laptop for DJ Gigs. During the week I will download new tracks and edit iTunes playlists on my Home PC. When I have to update my laptop, I copy the songs to a USB stick and paste and organize them on my DJ Laptop.
I researched sharing one iTunes library, but it will store all music on one master drive. This only allows you to stream within the wireless network. Once you leave that “home” network, your laptop has no music.
If you use iTunes which it sounds like you do, you could use iTunes match. It costs about £20 for a year but it makes your whole library available on every device you’re signed into. It’s designed for use with iPhones and iPads but I believe it should work between 2 windows machines too.
external hard drive … or what i do sometimes is share it on my network to grab files from one to the other (this process is slow and is usually running when i am asleep).
The iTunes SYNC is a great idea. When you purchase a new laptop and/or iPad. You just SYNC it to your old MAC. This would also help with backup redundancy. If any of the hard drives fail, you have other machines with the same libraries ready to SYNC.
Does iTunes Match stream or download songs?
On a computer, any songs stored in iCloud will stream over the air when played, though you can download them at any time by clicking the iCloud download button. iOS devices will start playing tracks from iCloud as they download and will store them so that you can listen to them later even if you don’t have a network connection. Apple TV only streams songs.
Confusing? Do I have to press download for each song?
JRiver Media Center lets you stream your collection over the net. The music is stored on your home PC, which would be designated the server, and then you use a password to access the music library. You can use this feature to tag or listen.
I don’t know whether the free audio only version has this feature.
I have my three computer’s setup so that they can be seen by each other. When I download music onto my main computer, tag etc…I than just use: control panel > network and internet > to open up the shared drives on the other computer and copy them over across the network. I’ll usually do it before I go to bed etc. It make it easier than using a jump drive or CD drive etc.
When you use iTunes match, the tracks will either match (no upload) or not match (upload the tracks.) When you play back on devices you could either stream the track or download it from the cloud. So it’s up to you. Most likely you want to download it if you want to play it outside a network, DJ it and so on.
still not sure if iTunes match will know which tracks are NOT on my DJ Laptop. So even though I upload from my Home PC I still have to figure out what’s not on my DJ Laptop. I think I need a network drive that syncs backups across all three devices.
Why don’t you make it easy and just edit your DJ playlists on your actual DJ laptop? That would make the most sense I’d say, instead of trying to make this whole thing difficult on yourself
