Lube The Mind

Share any song in your iTunes library and download any song from your friends’ iTunes libraries over the internet with freeware application Mojo (for both Windows and Mac). Essentially, Mojo makes sharing music with your friends through iTunes wildly simple, from its simple interface to its brilliant implementation. I just signed up for it (free) last night and have no connections yet, so I haven’t been able to fully use the program, but post your username once you sign up so the sharing can commence.  Below is a full-on screenshot tour and detailed walk-through and overview of everything Mojo has to offer.

Getting Started

To get started, you need to download and install Mojo on your computer (it’s fully ready to go on Macs, and currently in beta for Windows). The first time you run Mojo, you’ll be asked to create an account. Do that, then you’ll see the Mojo friends window, which is much like a buddy window on an instant messenger client. Granted, you won’t have any buddies in this window to begin with, but don’t worry, you will.Next, others need to download and install Mojo as well. They give you their user name, you hit the little plus (+) sign to add them as a buddy, and they’re sent an approval request. They approve you, and voilà—you now have access to every song in their iTunes library. So what now?

Browsing and Downloading Music

To browse your friend’s library, just double-click their entry in the buddy window. Mojo will open a new window which shows every song in their library and their playlists, along with their Movies, TV Shows, Podcasts, and Audiobooks. Double-click any song to play it back, and to download a song (or even video), just click the download arrow next to the song or the big download button at the bottom of the screen.
Mojo will download the song and automatically add it to your iTunes library. Additionally, it will even create a playlist in a folder called Mojo containing all the songs you downloaded from that friend.

You may be thinking: Sure, this is impressive, but what else can it do? Well, for one, Mojo automatically detects whether or not you already have a song in your iTunes library. Any song that you’ve already got displays in Mojo in a light gray color. And if your friend has purchased a song from the iTunes Music store, and it’s dripping with nasty DRM—Mojo highlights those tracks in red.

So What’s the Catch?

If you’ve already checked out the Mojo homepage, you may notice that there is a premium version of the application. Luckily for all of the cheapskates out there like me, you really don’t need to buy the premium version to enjoy most of the best features of Mojo. But let’s say you do want to go Pro. Here’s what you get:

• Unlimited friends
• Playlist subscriptions

As far as I can tell, that’s it. Playlist subscriptions, which allow you to subscribe to a playlist in your friend’s library, automatically downloads music in the playlist as your friend adds to it. Crazy cool, yes, but if you don’t want to shell out for it, it’s really not that must-have.

Right now, as I said, Mojo is available and ready for primetime on the Mac, and is currently in beta for Windows users. The app takes practically zero know-how to set up and get started with, and everything it does is near perfect. I’ve only tested it on my Mac so far, so if you give the beta a try on Windows, let’s hear how it’s working in the comments. For another detailed usage overview, check out the introduction screencast from Mojo.

Download the software here: Mojo