Music collection - automating my catalog

[mcewinter]

I'm looking to simplify how my music reaches my ears, here's what I'm looking to do...

1. Purchase a song/album from iTunes on my iPad/iPod or iTunes on my laptop.
2. Song/album automatically downloads to my WHS via iTunes automatic download (via iHomeServer)
3. Song/album automatically upload to Google music

So basically if I buy a song from my iPod or Ipad, it automatically populates to my WHS music folder and is available on my Android phone without any intervention. These are my hopes and dreams anyway but I'm already having problems with step one. The main issues is my lack of understanding iTunes. My purchase(s) download automatically to my laptop just fine but not to my WHS. Is the issue with WHS or iTunes?

Does anybody have a decent understanding of iOS devices and iTunes? How do I tie my iDevices to my WHS to get the automatic download to... well... automate?

[mcewinter]

I'll be spending more time on this. I'm going to dedicate an Itouch to my little cause here and see if I can get my desired result.

My end desire is to sync music to my car without doing much of anything except for parking my car within wifi range.

[barnabas1969]

I'm not an "iPerson", but I read a little bit about iHomeServer. It basically just runs iTunes as a service in the background. So let me ask you this...

If you have iTunes running on two different PC's, and you purchase a song on one of them, does it automatically get downloaded to the hard drive on the other one?

[barnabas1969]

OK, so I answered my own question. The following link shows how to set this up so that it automatically copies stuff to your iHomeServer machine. It looks like you'll have to first copy your entire library manually, and then after setting it up with this guide, it should automatically keep in sync with your laptop. Here's the link:

http://blog.bizmodeller.com/post/2011/1 ... Tunes.aspx

[mcewinter]

No, and I'm not sure if it's supposed to. Ideally, my purchase would download to any/all machines with iTunes set to automatically download. I'm not exactly sure how automatically download is supposed to work (obiously) but I'm thinking it is tied to the device. In other words, if I purchase a song on my iPad it will download automatically to my laptap which is where I initially set up my iPad.

So I think I have to "pair" my iDevices with iTunes on my server.

[barnabas1969]

My next question, after you follow the steps in my last post, is:

It's my understanding that iTunes downloads music in Apple's proprietary format... which, as I understand, is not playable on an Android. I could be wrong.

So... A) how do you plan to automatically upload stuff to Google Music, and B) how will that content play on your Android?

[mcewinter]

OK, so I answered my own question. The following link shows how to set this up so that it automatically copies stuff to your iHomeServer machine. It looks like you'll have to first copy your entire library manually, and then after setting it up with this guide, it should automatically keep in sync with your laptop. Here's the link:

http://blog.bizmodeller.com/post/2011/1 ... Tunes.aspx

Ooh! This might help. I thought I tried all the logical steps but maybe not. From what I read it seems that the method described will transfer purchases from my lappy to my server which is better than how it is now (non-functional) but ideally the songs would simply download from iTunes to my server rather than transfer them from one machine to the other.

[mcewinter]

My next question, after you follow the steps in my last post, is:

It's my understanding that iTunes downloads music in Apple's proprietary format... which, as I understand, is not playable on an Android. I could be wrong.

So... A) how do you plan to automatically upload stuff to Google Music, and B) how will that content play on your Android?

iTunes downloads are mp3 256k. The Google part is actually the functional part of my config....when google music sees a change in my music folder it automatically uploads to google music playable via this app... https://market.android.com/details?id=c ... roid.music .

[barnabas1969]

Cool. Sounds like it should work then. Good idea.

[mcewinter]

Well, it works as planned. I make a purchase on iTunes and it populates on my server which in turn populates in Google music without prodding it along.

If I place that purchase into a specific playlist either from iTunes or an iDevice, iTunes automatically syncs that playlist to my (other) iDevices.

So basically when I buy music it gets pushed anywhere my ears are or will be without any intervention whatsoever.