On college campuses, sharing music using iTunes is becoming extremely popular. Ever since the 4.0 release of their iTunes music player, Apple has allowed its users to share music over a local network so that other users could listen to, but not download, other people’s music. This has become immensely popular on college campuses, as several people on the same network ultimately means there will be more music to listen to at any time. Unfortunately, Apple has also chosen to impose a limit on the number of daily connections that can be made to any particular share. Whenever someone tries to access a share, they are often greeted with a notification that the host has exceeded their daily limit on connections. Fortunately, this limitation is built into iTunes itself, and not the protocol. This is where DAAP comes in.

First off, what is DAAP? DAAP stands for Digital Audio Access Protocol, and was created by Apple. Although they have not officially released the specifications, software developers have since reverse engineered the protocol enough to make use of it. Several ways of sharing music over DAAP are possible, the first of which is of course, iTunes. However, iTunes enforces the “5 connections per day” limit, so we move on to look for other ways of hosting a share. The second most popular DAAP server, although many of it’s users don’t realize they are using it: Limewire. Limewire shares all downloaded music over DAAP, but it doesn’t make sense to have it running all the time, so it’s out as well.

Linux users have by far the most options for sharing music, as many of the common audio players support DAAP, but as few people use Linux as their primary operating system, I won’t go into great detail about them. Currently, I use my Mac Mini for running my DAAP share, and did so using a program called mt-daapd (Multi-Threaded Digital Audio Access Protocol Daemon) which ran in the background of my system everytime it started up. The mt-daapd installation procedure was far from simple, and required a good understanding of the UNIX command line. Also, it only ran on POSIX systems such as Linux, BSD, or OS X: Still no windows.

Just in the last hour or so, I discovered another program, known as Firefly. Firefly is based on mt-daapd, but unlike mt-daapd it offers a Windows version, meaning any operating system should be capable of running it. Also, Firefly features a much simpler installation procedure, and offers a simple GUI for setting up and administering the share.

In order to install Firefly, first navigate to their webpage, http://www.fireflymediaserver.org, then download the nightly build that corresponds to your system. For most users, this will be the Windows version. After downloading, follow any instructions during the installation process, and you should be good to go. I don’t even have a Windows PC at the moment, so I can’t comment on how well the Windows version is, but the Mac OS X version is rock-solid. After successfully setting up a share using Firefly, be sure to disable iTunes built in sharing. You will still use iTunes to listen to your music, and to music shares, but Firefly will handle the hosting itself. Another added advantage is that Firefly will not disconnect your music share every time you close iTunes. So, give it a try and see if it works for you. If it does, tell me, as I’m curious how mature this program is on the Windows platform.

Edit: I have been informed that to run Firefly on Windows, you must install Apple’s Bonjour for Windows, which is can be downloaded here: http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/bonjour/.