Apple Family Sharing

[Craikeybaby]

My wife and I both invested in the Apple ecosystem, with our own libraries of music/apps etc. So when my wife's Spotify premium subscription ran out recently we were looking at signing up to Apple Music, using the family option - but that looks like it needs the Family Sharing enabled. Which means merging all purchases and only using one payment method going forward.

Has anyone set this up? How did you find it?

[onlynik]

I use it, and it is OK. However if you load the main account with a gift card, only the main account holder can spend this. So gift cards need to be added to the accounts you want.

I've recently gone back to a single user Apple music account, as I found my wife would just listen to music at home through the Sonos which is configured with my account.

[Craikeybaby]

That is helpful to know, as it would be a solution to everything getting billed to one card.

[Mattt]

I ditched the family sharing for this reason, there's no option to split payments AFAIK

[maccas99]

onlynik said:

I use it, and it is OK. However if you load the main account with a gift card, only the main account holder can spend this. So gift cards need to be added to the accounts you want.

I've recently gone back to a single user Apple music account, as I found my wife would just listen to music at home through the Sonos which is configured with my account.

I'm currently running a Spotify Premium account and I get the problem that if I am on the train and listening to a playlist on Spotify and my wife uses Spotify on the Sonos at home it pauses my account because it is in use elsewhere.

Does this happen with Apple Music on a single user account or do you need to go for Apple Music with the Family option?

[INWB]

All the family use my apple account because sharing is so restrictive.

[feef]

I'm on a family share and all I do is fire up my online banking app and transfer over the cost of an album or whatever when I make the purchase
I've just got into the habit of doing that extra step and it's not really an inconvenience

[onlynik]

maccas99 said:

I'm currently running a Spotify Premium account and I get the problem that if I am on the train and listening to a playlist on Spotify and my wife uses Spotify on the Sonos at home it pauses my account because it is in use elsewhere.

Does this happen with Apple Music on a single user account or do you need to go for Apple Music with the Family option?

Never noticed it. I've been listening to music in the office whilst my wife has had the Sonos playing music.

[mini me]

onlynik said:

Never noticed it. I've been listening to music in the office whilst my wife has had the Sonos playing music.

I have. Also listening in the office. I often get a message saying that its being used elsewhere and when I check its er indoors. I just ok the message though and it carries on playing normally only does it once. Perhaps its a setting somewhere you can apply/ turn off?

[maccas99]

OK thanks guys, Spotify does this and I wondered if Apple Music behaves the same. One account, can you simultaneously listen on two discrete devices?

[Craikeybaby]

I've had this up and running for a few months now and it has been working really well. On the odd occasion that either of us have bought anything we just pay back into the joint account, which the iTunes account is now linked to.

[audi321]

INWB said:

All the family use my apple account because sharing is so restrictive.

That's a recipe for disaster in years to come. I don't see sharing as restrictive at all?

[Zod]

We se it so that I can police the kids' purchases. One annoyance is that it only allows for one organiser, so you can't have both parents set up to authorise. The biggest annoyance, that infuriates me is that iCloud storage is not share, so I have to pay extra each month for every other member of the family, despite having 400GB of storage free.

[audi321]

Zod said:

We se it so that I can police the kids' purchases. One annoyance is that it only allows for one organiser, so you can't have both parents set up to authorise. The biggest annoyance, that infuriates me is that iCloud storage is not share, so I have to pay extra each month for every other member of the family, despite having 400GB of storage free.

Are you sure you can't have more than one authoriser??

[Zod]

audi321 said:

Zod said:

We se it so that I can police the kids' purchases. One annoyance is that it only allows for one organiser, so you can't have both parents set up to authorise. The biggest annoyance, that infuriates me is that iCloud storage is not share, so I have to pay extra each month for every other member of the family, despite having 400GB of storage free.

Are you sure you can't have more than one authoriser??

Only one can be the organiser.

[sly fox]

audi321 said:

Are you sure you can't have more than one authoriser??

Yes you can- i have the account and am the organiser, girlfriend is parent/authoriser for children. Works well.

Only annoying thing is that you cannot share Book purchases too.

[audi321]

Zod said:

Only one can be the organiser.

Definitely more than one authoriser though