iTunes streaming now only allows five users per day?

Posted by Neil Crosby on January 18, 2005 10:29 PM

The shared music library "whatever" accepts only five different users each day. Please try again later.I upgraded iTunes to 4.7.1.30 a few days ago, when it became available, and I’ve had no problems with it, except one. Whilst it’s been the case for a long time now that iTunes will only allow five people to be streaming music from a computer simultaneously, it appears that from 4.7.1.30, any computer running iTunes can only have five separate computers connected to it during the period of one day. Why do I say this? Well, since the release of 4.7.1.30, more and more often when attempting to view the music available for streaming on people’s computers on this network, I am being greeted by the following message:

The shared music library “whatever” accepts only five different users each day. Please try again later.

Now maybe this is just me, and maybe this five per day limit has actually been the case for a while, but I have not seen it happening until the release of 4.7.1.30. Can anyone confirm or deny my findings?

Update:

The “only five users per day” thing has now been confirmed by several other people, including Paul Mison, and The MacMinute Café.

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Comments

  1. by Anonymous on January 20, 2005 10:29 AM

    I just right now upgraded to 4.7.1 and was greeted by that message for the first time.

  2. by Neil Crosby on January 20, 2005 01:47 PM

    Thanks. It’s a pity that Apple has seen fit to do this, but I can see why they feel it’s necessary. It’s just unfortunate for those households where there are completely legitimately more than 5 computers which are used to stream music - such as mine back in Leicester whenever I’m there.

  3. by Anonymous on January 20, 2005 02:55 PM

    The only way I’ve found to get around this is to close out of iTunes and change the date on my computer by double click on the clock in the bottom right corner. Then reopening iTunes for my friends. This is annoying and out of the way for me to do so it’s just for people I know on my network. Anyways if you do this don’t forget the set the calender date back to the correct date for your sake.

  4. by g3k on January 21, 2005 09:49 AM

    consider this an angry confirmation mad

    people use filesharing programs here to scan the uni residence hall LAN for itunes shares. if five people decide to open mytunes or ourtunes or whateverthefucktunes within a 24-hour period, i can’t access my music from my friends’ computers. damn it all to hell.

  5. by Anonymous on January 21, 2005 10:49 AM

    I suspect that a failed attempt to open a password-protected share doesn’t count as one of the five?

  6. by g3k on January 21, 2005 10:55 AM

    I’d assume so, which is why I password-protected my share last night and put the password in the shared name.

  7. by Anonymous on January 21, 2005 12:14 PM

    I’ve heard that on some college campuses people circumvent the 5-a-day limit by pasword protecting and then putting the password in parentheses after their name, so users can still connect freely and there is no limit on the number of users. It has the added benefit of making your library inaccessible to Ourtunes and similar programs. Since iTunes sharing is big on my campus, I’m going to try to spread the idea.

  8. by g3k on January 22, 2005 09:35 AM

    Aye, I’ve been doing that for months now. It has the added bonus of decreasing traffic overall so that virtually no one is sucking my bandwidth down.

  9. by partytodamascus on January 24, 2005 05:28 PM

    Does the password protect honestly overturn the users-per-day limit? I’ve put it on just now, with no change - but I imagine it would take at least a day to restart, or something like that. I’m unfortunately quite new to itunes, and this was going to be my method of being able to play music from my desktop remotely, for a possible radio show. This definately hurts my plans.

  10. by g3k on January 25, 2005 08:52 PM

    I don’t think it ever overturned the limit. But people can’t connect if they don’t have the password, so as long as you don’t make the password public it shouldn’t be an issue.

  11. by Anonymous on June 7, 2005 07:19 PM

    In response to my own post (I suspect), I’d like to let people know that the password workaround no longer works… maybe Apple removed the loophole in the latest version of iTunes. According to reports from people on my campus, my passworded iTunes library still displays the five users a day limit. Does anyone else have experience with this?

  12. by Anonymous on June 15, 2005 08:59 AM

    I’ve had this problem at my college campus as well, the password thing sounds like a good idea.

  13. by Anonymous on June 29, 2005 07:43 PM

    i am also frustrated by this new message. i am in a dorm network, and i tried clicking on others’ music at 12 midnight. i tried this so i could be one of the first “5 a day” users, but to no avail. i find this message as bullsh!t, and there has to be a reason behind it. there is no such thing as 5 people access. i have file sharing on, and cannot access anyones files at the “beginning” of the day. what the heck?

  14. by Anonymous on October 24, 2005 03:42 PM

    Yeah this is completely daft…surely they know this is likely to be used in places like uni campuses where it is likely that more than 5 godamn people a day will want to view someones music? Yeah i tried passwording mine but that didn’t work, and I do think that each offical ‘day’ is measured from a weird-ass time. Are there any other file sharing programmes like this that aren’t imposing a stupid user limit?

  15. by Anonymous on October 25, 2005 09:26 PM

    downgrade to itunes 4.7 not 4.7.1

  16. by Anonymous on December 2, 2005 08:01 AM

    Apparently the password-protect trick doesn’t work with newer versions of iTunes. However, you can use a separate program to share your music collection with people running iTunes. If you have Mac, there’s a pretty good guide here:

    How to share your iTunes music with more than 5 users a day

    It takes some doing, but definitely worth it.

  17. by g3k on December 2, 2005 09:18 AM

    Right, but what about the 95% of people using Windows machines? ;-)

  18. by Anonymous on December 20, 2005 04:27 PM

    so that link says you have to be a user to log in to edit it…great, but after 30 minutes of looking around, it seems impossible to create a new account! Am I just stupid?

  19. by Anonymous on January 11, 2006 03:32 AM

    Look for a Genius hacker and then your answer will be found. I am also pissed about this BS 5 a day crap. I think that it should be unlimited. I like to take other peoples music and it upsets me that I cant do that at 11 o’clock at night because of some stupid rule. ARH Im angry. College firewalls cannot block Filetopia. Just thought that I would let you all know. If you wanna DL and your in College.

  20. by nobby peters on November 8, 2006 11:13 AM

    i have got the old version of itunes hahaha. it works fine for me. shame!!!!!!!!!!

  21. by El on January 29, 2007 07:02 PM

    I’m using a Mac and had been using OurTunes, but the college firewall blocked it. Filetopia only works for windows. anyone know which program i can use that’ll get around the block? Blue Coconut can’t. thanks.

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workingwith.me.uk is a resource for web developers created by Neil Crosby, a web developer who lives and works in London, England. More about the site.

Neil Crosby now blogs at The Code Train and also runs NeilCrosby.com, The Ten Word Review and Everything is Rubbish.