I bought an iPod when they were introduced, and I started using iTunes when it was introduced.  I’ve gone through a few different iPods, and then got an iPhone when it was first introduced.  Today, I’ve got an iPod Shuffle, an iPhone 4, and an iPad 2.  I also have two separate iTunes libraries: one on the home server, and one at work.

When I first started using iTunes, most of my music library was MP3.  Upon the introduction of Apple Lossless (ALAC) and its support in iTunes, I decided to move to that in an attempt to future-proof my library.  The decision to move to ALAC had some unexpected fall out.  When ALAC was introduced, iTunes treated those files exactly the same as other supported music files.  This is mostly fine, except that ALAC files are much much larger than MP3 or AAC files, which means that you can’t store a lot of music on an iPod or iPhone.

Concurrently, that first iPhone had a problem: to get my calendar or address book onto it, I had to sync with iTunes.  Support for Exchange ActiveSync wasn’t added until much later.  My work calendar has everything on it, and so my iPhone had to sync with my work laptop if its calendar and address book were to be of any use at all.

I ended up creating a new iTunes library on my work laptop, just for syncing my iPhone.  I ripped a bunch of CDs to my work laptop, using AAC so that I’d have reasonable file sizes for use on my phone.  A side effect of this decision is that my work laptop is also the home for my iPhoto library, since the vast majority of my pictures are taken with my iPhone.

In the intervening time, though, things have changed.  My two primary reasons for needing that separate iTunes library have disappeared.  iTunes will now downsample ALAC files for use on the iPhone and iPod, so I don’t have to worry about having massive files on there.  The iPhone now supports Exchange ActiveSync, so I don’t need to sync it with my work laptop to have my calendar available to me on my phone.

The problem is that iTunes has grown in that intervening time, too.  It’s no longer just where my music lives.  It’s where I buy some music¹, and now it’s where I buy apps for my iPhone and my iPad.  iTunes is the gatekeeper for how I get data onto my iPhone and iPad.  And there’s also the Mac App Store, which is tied to the same Apple ID that my iTunes account is, and so conceptually I think of them as living on the same computer.  (And yes, I do have two Apple IDs: the one that I’ve been using for purchasing songs/apps, and my developer Apple ID.)

iTunes Match could solve part of this problem for me, although I hit up against its 25k track limit.  Macworld has published a workaround for this, which is to have a separate iTunes library that syncs with iTunes Match.  This is really no different than my two-libraries-on-two-machines approach now, so it’s not very useful to me.  I hope that Apple improves this in the future, because I really do love the idea of iTunes Match.

The problem that my household has is the proliferation of devices, which has led to a proliferation of iTunes libraries.  I’ve got two Macs (one at home, one at the office).  My husband has two Macs too (also one at home and one at the office).  Our home server is a Mac, and it is the main repository for our media collection.  We’ve got another Mac in our home study.  I’ve got an iPhone 4, iPod Shuffle, and iPad 2.  My husband has an iPhone 4, iPad, and an iPod.  He’s got his own iTunes account, mostly for iPhone apps that he’s purchased.

I think that the next thing that I’ve got to figure out in with iTunes is how to contain all of this sprawl.  To date, I’ve just handled the new changes in iTunes on an ad hoc basis.  It’s time to stop and figure out how to move forward.  Is it possible for us to have just one iTunes library?  How do we handle all of the music and apps that one of us has purchased?  How does this impact our photo libraries?  I’m not sure, but I think that we’ve got to figure it out soon, before the situation gets any worse.