Launch an iTunes song from an URL

Question

Is there a way, using a URL, to launch a particular track in the iTunes player (on the local machine)?

I've noticed that URLs starting with "itunes://" launch the iTunes application, but cause it to look up an item in the iTunes Store.

However, I am not interested in the iTunes Store; I only want to the player to play a track in my local library.

Answer 1

_{I moved my iTunes library around a bit, so I don't know the canonical path. Just adjust the URLs you see in this answer.}

Configure Firefox to handle audio/mpeg using iTunes:

Then, open a URL in Firefox such as (on Mac OS X):

file:///Users/username/Music/iTunes/iTunes%20Music/Artist/Album/Title.mp3

and it will play in iTunes. Since it's already in the library, it's not added again.

Using a browser like Firefox (not IE) has the benefit of being able to browse the file system if you want, and clicking on a file then opens in iTunes.

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Similarly, in OS X Terminal, you can use the following:

open -a iTunes file:///Users/username/Music/iTunes/iTunes%20Music/Artist/Album/Title.mp3

It will use iTunes to open the URL, playing the file.

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I don't have a Windows system with iTunes, it might work from Explorer if you use iTunes as default application for .mp3 files.

Via here, the following could work:

 rundll32.exe url.dll,FileProtocolHandler file://c:/wherever/iTunes/library/is/on/Windows/file.mp3

Answer 2

No. (Edit: After the comments below, I'm changing my answer to yes, you can. But not exactly the way I think you mean.)

The "itunes" function you mention is not intended to play music; it launches a web page inside the iTunes application.

To launch a local resource:

"The URL" of a track on your computer is the path to that song. A path looks like this:

C:\Users\goblinbox\Music\iTunes\iTunes Music\Bassnectar\Mesmerizing The Ultra

If you have iTunes set as your default music player, accessing the path to the song will launch iTunes and play the song.

You could, if you wanted, put that path into a web page, display it in a browser, and launch the song in iTunes on your local machine, but there's no advantage invoking web protocols when you already have access to the resource locally.