It's easy to assume that most people with computers have media libraries. As computers become cheaper, easier to network and easier to use, people are more likely to create home networks. Since servers aren't practical in a home setting, information is distributed amongst the computers in the network, which makes managing and finding formation difficult. This is probably most evident in music libraries.

Most media players maintain a private database containing all of the songs they're aware of. Keeping these databases up-to-date can be a chore on a single computer, and keeping databases current on several computers often seems impossible.

A common solution is to keep all music files on a single computer and have other computers' media libraries point to, and stay current with, the files on that computer. Anyone that has tried this in practice knows that it's an adequate solution, but not an ideal one. Personally, I just want to listen to music, not manage it.

My home setup consists of a Windows Media Center computer that drives my TV and has all of my music on it, my workstation, and occasionally a laptop. Keeping the workstation current with the music on the Media Center has always been a hassle, and doing so on the laptop just isn't practical. I wanted a simple, clean way to listen to music anywhere in my apartment, from any computer, without having to worry about the accuracy of the library. I chose to build a little website whose only purpose would be to get me to the music I wanted to listen to as painlessly as possible. I used Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition Beta 2 to make this happen.



Article and source are available at MSDN.