CasaTunes My Music Setup

Contents

IntroductionSharing your music on a MacUsing the new Mac Music app on Mac OS Catalina and laterSharing your music on a PCAdding a music collection using CasaSetupCreate a new music collectionSetup the new music collectionViewing progress and information about your music collection and disc cacheUsing CasaTunes My MusicCasaTunes My Music FAQ

Introduction

CasaTunes My Music will discover, index, and if configured, copy all your music files located on one or more of your PCs, Macs and/or networked storage devices, to your CasaTunes music server. Once the music files have been discovered and indexed, CasaTunes can play your music either from their original networked location, or from a local copy stored on the music server.

Before CasaTunes My Music can discover and index your music, you must share, that is allow CasaTunes to access, the music on your PC, Mac or networked storage device. The instructions to share access to your music varies depending on whether your music is on a PC or Mac.  To share access to a folder on your networked storage device follow the instructions for the networked storage device.

Sharing your music on a Mac

In order to share your music on a Mac:

• Open the System Preferences on your Mac by choosing the Apple menu > System Preferences
• Click on the Sharing icon to open the Sharing preference pane
• Check the File Sharing checkbox in the left hand side pane
• To share the folder containing your music, click + at the bottom of the Shared Folders list, locate and select the folder that contains your music, and click Add.

• Click on Options and click the checkbox next to the username. You'll be prompted to enter the password for the user account on your Mac computer.

• The next step is to use CasaSetup or the CasaTunes App and add a music collection for this shared folder to index, so that you can play this music with CasaTunes. 
• When setting up your new music collection in CasaSetup you should enter the IP Address or SMB name of your Mac and the name of your music folder you shared on your Mac in the Location field. In the example above, you would enter: \\172.22.12.232\iTunes
• In CasaSetup you must also specify the users Mac name and password

How to switch to a local login password for Mac File Sharing instead of using your iCloud Password to login to your Mac

Mac File Sharing requires a local password account. If you are using an iCloud password to login to your Mac, you will need to switch the login to use a separate local password.

• Go to the  Apple menu and choose System Preferences. Select Users & Groups, and select the account you want to create a unique separate password for and unassign from using your iCloud password
• Select Change Password next to the user name
• When prompted for Do you want to change your iCloud password, or stop using your iCloud password to unlock this Mac and create a separate password?, select Use Separate Password, and follow the instructions
• Now when logging into your Mac, you use the separate account password rather than the iCloud and Apple ID account password

Using the new Music App on Mac OS Catalina and later

With the introduction of MacOS Catalina, Apple replaced the iTunes App with a new Music App and introduced a new music streaming service called Apple Music.

While the Music App now supports the new streaming music service, it continues to support a user's personal music library, which includes songs purchased from the iTunes/Music Store as well as music imported from discs and other apps.

To play music from your personal music library in the Music app, you can continue to use CasaTunes My Music to discover, and optionally copy, your music onto the CasaTunes music server.

Prior to the Catalina release, CasaTunes My Music would monitor a special iTunes file, often referred to as the iTunes Music Library XML file. This special iTunes file maintained a list of all the songs, albums and playlists contained within iTunes, which made it possible for CasaTunes My Music to quickly discover your iTunes music and playlists, and to automatically update your music catalog whenever changes were made to this file.

While the new Music App no longer automatically creates and/or updates this file when changes are made to the users library, you can manually create and update this file by exporting the library file from the Music App. While CasaTunes can detect any new music files without this file, you will need to manually export this file every time you make changes to your playlists.

To manually export your Library file, follow these steps:

• Open the Music App on your Mac
• From the Music App menu select File > Library > Export Library...
• Locate your iTunes folder (under Music)
• Save the Library file and name it iTunes Music Library.xml (and replace the current file, if prompted)
• After a minute or so, CasaTunes will automatically start to re-scynchronize your music and update any playlists

Note: My Music can only copy files that are downloaded from the cloud

Before synchronizing, as well as exporting your library file, make sure all the songs you want CasaTunes to copy have already been downloaded onto your laptop or desktop computer.

Sharing your music on a PC

In order to share your music on a PC running Windows 10:

• Open Windows Explorer by selecting the Start button and selecting File Explorer
• Step 1: Select Network to check whether File Sharing is enabled
• Step 2: If File Sharing is turned off, then click to enable

• Turn on network discovery and file sharing (if not already enabled)

Navigate to the folder that contains your music that you want to share. In the example below, we want to share the iTunes folder in the Music folder.

• Step 1: Select the folder that contains all your music that you want to share
• Step 2: Select the Share tab
• Step 3: Select "Specific people..." button to specify who can access the music you are sharing

Select who you want to share your music with. We recommend selecting Everyone from the dropdown.

• Click the arrow and select Everyone from the drop down list
• Select Add
• Change the Permission Level to Read
• Select Share

Windows now displays the network path for your share. You will enter this path as the Location for your music collection in CasaSetup > My Music.

• Write down the location displayed. You will need to enter this location in CasaSetup
• Select Done

You have completed sharing your music so it is accessible by CasaTunes. The next step is to use CasaSetup to configure a music collection that indexes the music on this shared folder so that you can play this music with CasaTunes.

Adding a music collection using CasaSetup

Now that you have shared your music, you must use CasaSetup to add your music collection to be indexed.

Create a new music collection

• Open CasaSetup
• Select My Music
• Select Add Music Collection

Setup the new music collection

• Enter a Name for your newly created music collection
• Using the information you saved when you created your music share, enter either the \\server name\share name or the\\IP address\share name, and the username and password for the share, if any
• Select whether to copy the music onto your music server
• Select Save Settings. CasaTunes will verify it is able to find and access the share using the credentials you provided (if any)
• Once CasaSetup has successfully verified your new music collection, CasaTunes My Music will begin indexing the music on your share, and if configured, copy your music

Viewing progress and information about your music collection and disc cache

• You can view progress and information about your music collection in the Music Collection Information section
• The Disc Cache Information section displays the total amount of disc space available (Size) for caching, how much has been used (Used), and how much space remains available (Available). This information includes all music collections

Using My Music

The following screenshots shows how My Music music collections are displayed in the iPhone App. Other Apps will be similar.

Select Music to view all your music services

Select My Music to view your My Music music collections

All your My Music music collections are displayed. If you have more than one My Music music collection, we also display the special All My Music music collection. This collection is an aggregated or merged view of all your music collections.

• There is a special Folders collection which allows you to browse your music by hard disc folder.
• There is a special Recently Added collection which includes all music added to your music collection in the last 30 days. It does not include music added in the initial scan.
• If you added music to your collection, and it has not been automatically indexed, you can press the Refresh button to force My Music to re-scan or refresh your music collection. Although My Music automatically detects when music is added to iTunes, if your music is not in iTunes you will need to manually refresh your music collection.

My Music FAQ

For more information and trouble shooting My Music, please refer to the My Music FAQ tech note