I was ejecting my iPod in iTunes today, and I looked over and saw this weird thing…it was in the list with my library and playlists and whatnot, and it was right above the various default playlists, but had a purple icon thing. It was called “Deb lastname’s Music,” and it looked like some random person’s library, but it was filled with crappy Christian music, Dale Carnegie audio books, and, oddly enough, Eminem. Then, after I clicked on my library, it disappeared.
There is a place within itunes where odd people can submit their own favorite playlists. Could you have mistakenly downloaded one? Or started a download, and aborted it in some way, thus the disappearance.
I don’t think so…it wasn’t there when I finished adding some stuff to my library two days ago and closed iTunes. I plugged in my iPod last night, which automatically opened iTunes, then today, I clicked the button on the taskbar, clicked the eject button, and that’s it, until I noticed the Deb Whatshername oddity.
It sounds like someone’s shared music folder. iTunes allows users to share their music with other people on their network, allowing you to browse their library and play songs from it (though not copy them to your own machine).
This person must have sharing enabled, and be connected to your network somehow - are you running an unsecured wireless network, or is this a college dorm or corporate network or something where other people are connected at the same time?
If you’re not interested in other people’s music, open up your iTunes preferences, go to the Sharing tab, and uncheck “Look for shared music”.
Yep, it’s totally secure, the husband claims there’s no way anyone could accidentally or purposefully connect to our network (something about encryption that changes every two hours).
He claims that if a neighbor is using AirTunes, though, that my iTunes could pick it up. Could that be it?
Oh, and I was assuming it’s finding the other music by “Bonjour” networking, but on later reflection, even that would mean you’d be on the same net.
You might want to verify that your computer is connected to your secure wireless net rather than your neighbor’s insecure one. It might be connecting to whatever’s strongest when it logs in.
The same thing happened to me last week on my work computer ITunes. Only it wasn’t “Deb”, it was “TMac” or “MacG” or something. The playlist contained a bunch of obscure R&B that I would never listen to. When I tried to play the songs nothing happened. The playlist was gone the next day. Hasn’t happened since. Some kind of glitch I imagine.
I think that it can connect to multiple networks at once, if they’re all open. I know I’ve seen multiple shared lists on my home computer (living in an apartment building with 52 other college students, so wireless networks are abundant). This is on a Mac, incidentally.
It can connect to multiple computers at once but you are physically limited from connecting to more than one NETWORK per network adapter in your computer. Specifically if you have a wireless network adapter it will be connected to only one network, and if you have a wireless network it will either connect to yours or somebody elses (not both at the same time). If you are seeing somebody elses shared music on iTunes either THEY are on YOUR network or YOU are on THEIRS.
Barring some bizarre VPN/SSH catastrophe that typically does not accidentally befall anybody, much less Mac users, this is how it has to be.
Heh, you should try trucking your computer to the college and firing up iTunes. Boom, twenty extra shared libraries.
You can disable iTunes so that it will not pick up other libraries, and so that it will not share yours. I think the default option setting picks up shared libraries without sharing yours, but you might want to check your preferences. In any case, it doesn’t matter too much, since they can’t edit or even take anything from your library, only listen to it.