Need help making sense of iTunes server

[tangierc]

In my final trials of deciding between keeping the EX2 or Ultra or the Thunderbolt Duo, I’ve been testing out the iTunes Server feature.

Is this feature simply a means to stream audio and video content to computers and devices without my Mac being on?

I cannot add to the library whether my iTunes library file is on my computer or on the NAS.
I want to be able to have a shared library that multiple computers can see, add to, modify and stream from.
I want to be able to manage my media within iTunes, not in the Finder folders on my mac or from the web interface.

[ArMak]

Hello,

As far as i know the iTunes server only works as a way to stream the Music that’s on the drive to Itunes, lets see if another user can share some tips or information on this matter.

[mike27oct]

It looks like ArMak has it right. I have had iTunes turned on in the My Cloud all along, the My Cloud shows as another source of music other than what is in iTunes program database.

I had been underwhelmed about this since getting the MC, because the only music on My Cloud has only been from my iTunes Media folder from iTunes. It’s all the same stuff. But, this message cause me to look again, because a month or two ago I added music to MC from other than the iTunes folder. I added a folder of my wife’s downloads from eMusic to the My Cloud. So, I checked now to see if I could find any of it in iTunes from the My Cloud. I could not.
Hmmm. What’s up?.
I went into the MC Settings, found Refresh the iTunes database, and when it finished, went back to iTunes program and all her music is now listed under the My Cloud source along with my music.

So, if new music (i.e. a new source folder) is added to MC, to see it in iTunes it needs to be refreshed on My Cloud or it can be set to some auto refresh time. So, the feature works, and works fine.

I still won’t use it though, because I never play music on PC using iTunes program; how “old fashioned” is that! I have plenty of other ways to play from the My Cloud, so don’t need to play it’s music in iTunes.

[tangierc]

All of our music sits on our Mac and streams though our our home through various devices, mostly Apple TV. That’s besides the point though.

I noticed that when I have the iTunes server activated and chose the MyCloud EX2 Ultra in the iTunes app it showed a lot of audio that was not in the test library i created. It seems as though it just finds any audio on the drive and broadcasts that to iTunes.

Technically the library I created on the My Cloud NAS drive should have had nothing in it at first - part of my testing.