Sync a Dropbox Folder with iTunes

Question

Okay here's my scenario.

Dropbox is great for sharing things. iTunes is great for managing music. I have a private shared Dropbox folder that I use to share music among my friends. I use iTunes to manage and listen to my music. I want Dropbox and iTunes to work seamlessly together to deliver the shared music to my library in a way that is completely hands off for me.

There are several pieces of technology that make this close to happening.

iTunes just added a feature to let you drop music into a folder and have it auto imported to your library.

Meanwhile you can symlink dropbox folders from within that folder to have it point at your Dropbox. BUT the problem is iTunes automatically moves those files as soon as you touch them, thus removing them from the Dropbox, and preventing them from being shared.

What I think I need is a solution that somehow either:

1. (ideally) points itunes at a folder within dropbox and automatically adds those files to my library. I'm aware of this solution, but am looking for something a bit less effort-intensive.
2. (less ideally) automatically copies new files from my dropbox into the magic itunes folder which then will duplicate them in my library.

Anyone have any thoughts? I should mention I'm doing this on Windows XP, but would ideally be looking for a cross-platform solution.

Answer 1

You could uninstall Dropbox, and then reinstall it with a custom directory within the Itunes Auto-Sync Folder. Or if the choice for a custom directory isn't available, you could try just copy/pasting the Dropbox Directory into the Auto-share folder

Answer 2

Can you not just load to drop box and become one of the persons who share that file? Load it to your Itunes folder from Dropbox, as you would have your friends do.