Apple iTunes is one of the most popular music managers and players. While it can be used to play music locally it does not offer any means to play music over the Internet which might be interesting for users who work on different computer systems, e.g. a home computer and one at the office.
Pulptunes is a iTunes music server that can stream mp3 and m4a files over the Internet. The music can then be accessed in any modern web browser including Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox or Opera. The user can then access the music that is stored on his local computer system over the Internet.
PulpTunes is not only available for Windows operating systems but also Linux and Macintosh. The software program tries to find the location of the iTunes XML file automatically which worked fine on the test system. Linux users and those where it was not found automatically need to add the path to the program manually.
Songs can be played directly in the web browser or downloaded with a right-click. All iTunes playlists and genres are available in the interface which makes it easier to locate albums or songs. A search is also provided to search the music collection.
Advanced options are available that include a basic user management so that only authorized users have access to the web service. Other options include:
- Displays cover art if found
- Generate direct links to songs or playlists to send to your friends
- iTunes DJ integration
- Command-line mode for server environments
- Adjustable buffer level
PulpTunes needs to be running on the local computer system so that users can connect to the service over the Internet.
Related posts:
- Apple iTunes Music Library Cleanup
- Share iTunes and Winamp music
- Harmony uses iTunes to play music without iTunes
- Listen to your music from anywhere
- Use Youtube As Your Music Collection With Muziic
- Apple iTunes Songs Cleanup
- iTunes Playlist Exporter
- Stream Music With Subsonic
I have to say I tried this, both on my mac, and my PC, my macbook did fine, and it booted right up. Vista, it didn’t like so much. It may though just have choked on my good sized music collection.
For those of you (including me) with dynamic IPs, you can simply get a name for it at afraid.org , dyndns.com , or no-ip.com and configure an automatic updater program. Also, my old netgear and new Linksys router both have options to automatically updated my dyndns.com alias.