iTunes Music Server pulpTunes
PulpTunes is a free software program for Microsoft Windows that offers music serving capabilities to stream music over the Internet.
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.
Basically, what it enables you to do is access your iTunes music library over the Internet, provided that the computer that iTunes is installed on is connected to the Internet and pulpTunes is running on it.
Pulptunes
PulpTunes is available for Windows operating systems and also Linux and Macintosh. The software program tries to find the location of the iTunes XML file automatically on first start. This worked fine on our test system, but if that does not work for whatever reason, there is an option to add the path to the file 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.
Verdict
PulpTunes is a handy software program for iTunes users who want access to their music library on other devices as well without having to sync the library to all these devices.
Please note that the program has not been updated for several years; the project appears to be dead, but it should work just fine nevertheless.
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.
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.