(no subject)

So today, Stanford announced http://itunes.stanford.edu - The University's content served out by iTunes. Very cute. Which led me to thinking, how hard would it be to make your own material available using iTunes?

Step 1) Setup Apache + SSL on a webserver

Step 2) Setup SSL Certificate and make OS X trust the Root CA used to sign it

Step 3) Make something to output appropriate XML

Step 4) Get an Apple.com hostname.. this one is pretty difficult, and will stop other people setting up an iTunes compatible music store. However, if you're doing it in a restricted environment, you could have a fake name.personaltunes.apple.com, for example. However, for testing, it's good enough that there is helpfully a localhost.apple.com in the DNS, resolving to 127.0.0.1.

Step 5) Work out how the purchasing mechanism works. I can't work out how to actually make it download the track and put it in the library. However, 4 is a killer stop, so I will just leave things where I've got to.

So the answer is that unfortunately, it would seem those sneaky people at Apple have made it pretty hard :) The store is nicely done however. Looks like there's an easy to use editor they have for the pages on it. You can listen to previews, and it shows up the tracks, which is really good enough for what I was curious about doing :)

My next project will be some nice way to display your music collection on the web, using the iTunes Music Library.xml file, some nice CSS and DHTML, and a method to allow appropriate people to actually download tracks for, erm, personal use or whatever :)

For now:
( Duck Tunes Music Store )