Whilst everything works very well locally, iTunes isn’t capable of sharing its library with the cloud: it’s local network or nothing.
One of the biggest annoyances of iTunes Home Sharing – and surprisingly enough one feature Apple hasn’t implemented yet – is the impossibility of streaming the contents of an iTunes library over the Internet. Just make sure you’re on the same WiFi network, and you’re all set. It is a great feature of iTunes, and with the latest iOS 4.3 update for iPhone and iPad it also works exceptionally well with mobile devices: once activated on the desktop, your entire iTunes library will be sent to the iOS iPod app without the need of syncing or manually copying anything. With an active Internet connection and an Apple ID configured with the iTunes Store, you’ll be able to easily share your entire iTunes library and enable other users to connect to your iTunes installation to stream songs, video files, and so forth. Introduced almost two years ago with iTunes 9, Home Sharing allows you to share your music and movies, TV shows, podcasts and playlists with friends and family on a local network.
