Sharing music with iTunes

So much for iTunes being scriptable. OK, that’s harsh, it’s very scriptable, most of the time, but it’s not at all scriptable when it comes to streaming music from another computer’s copy of iTunes. Only iTunes knows the details of what I’m playing, and it’s not telling.

If you query it through AppleScript, and you’re playing something from someone else’s machine, it claims you’re not playing anything. Hell, if you decide to rummage through all of the available playlists, the other computer doesn’t even show up. Which means that I can’t use Clutter to show me the artwork of the album that’s playing, because iTunes won’t tell it. Grrr.

I imagine the reason this information isn’t exposed is because if you knew that, you’d probably also know the URL it was being streamed from, and it’s very simple (I think someone posted a shell one-liner) to turn an MP3 stream into a MP3 file. But, frankly, I could do that just by using something like Audio Hijack.

As it is, all I want to do is be able to copy stuff from Cleodhna’s machine onto mine, or vice versa, without having to mess about with finding the original file, setting up file sharing, copying the thing over, then finding it on the other machine, bunging it into the appropriate place and adding it to the library.

iLeech can save streams from another machine, but I can’t help feeling there’s something wrong with replicating (badly, at the moment) the whole user interface.

So, lazyweb: any ideas? How can I tell what iTunes is playing, and where to get it? I’m afraid this might involve packet-sniffing outgoing traffic, which isn’t something you should be involved in just because your wife has ripped that particular track and you don’t want to have to rip it again.