Access shared windows media player library streams with WMP on Server 2008 R2?

Question

I have a Windows Server 2008 R2 server that doubles as a workstation.

How come the WMP that comes with R2 cannot access remotely shared music libraries on the network?

The library is shared with Windows 7 and shows up in network locations, but cannot be accessed as a streaming library on Server 2008 R2. Instead it just shows me a "Network Device" properties window.

The WMP version is the same on both 7 and R2. Any ideas for how to enable consumption of WMP shares in R2?

Answer 1

I kinda solved this problem by doing the following workaround:

1) I shared the remote music library as a network share

2) I added the network share as a location in R2's music library.

Voila!