Q: Will TuneRanger sync iTunes libraries and playlists that use a common share on a server or a NAS without duplicating files on the NAS?
A: The answer is yes as long as all sync clients in the group point to the network share in exactly the same way. The key is in the iTunes preference setting iTunes->Preferences->Advanced->General->iTunes Music folder location which must point to the shared directory containing all the music and video files on the NAS. This setting must be the same for all iTunes libraries to be synchronized. Another critical setting is “Keep iTunes Music folder organized” which must be checked ON for everything to work properly.

This is a classic problem that a database server handles very well. None of the solutions I’ve found take that approach, so my guess is a good solution doesn’t exist yet. Other solutions are possible, perhaps something like what revision checking systems use (RCS, CVS, Subversion), where files are checked in and out. Hmm, that might work well.

For your problem of synchronizing music and folders, you might just use a general backup utility like SuperDuper, which does that quite well. It wouldn’t read the MP3 metadata, but the important stuff is kinda built into the file structure.

has anyone seen this review of several other syncing apps?
http://www.pcworld.com/article/147932/sync_your_itunes_libraries.html

https://www.socketheadstudios.com/mytunesync/faq.html

http://www.sonzea.com/syncopation/

http://www.martian.com/SlingShot.html

Wondering if someone can provide insight.

Wife has a PC, I have a Mac. All our music is on a network drive in our home, and both our iTunes is setup to read/save music files onto the same Network Drive.

At initial import everything is fine, but if I buy a song or if she buys a song, the other iTunes library does not get updated because iTunes doesn’t have a “Watch Folders” options (seriously why isn’t this available).

So we have one copy of music, accessible on each iTunes. We don’t use “shared” libraries because we can’t manage our iPod music from a shared library, and we both want to do it on our own computers.

So the big question, will TuneRanger sync the iTunes library file? Or will it try to re-copy the music from machine to machine which seems like it would screw up everything by creating tons of duplicates.

My problem was that I ran out of space for the consolidated file (in the end, it exceeded the size of any hard drive that I had available) so I ended up stopping the full consolidation.