Sharing Apple Music with friends

[EdisEdward]

Hi, I am planning to sign up for this feature and share my "family" with my sister, brother, and three other regular friends. I trust my friends, but is this safe to do? I have not tried the family feature yet, and I do not want to share anything (photos, music, files, app downloads, etc) with any of them except the right to use Apple Music. I also do not want them to be able to purchase things using my credit card without my permission.

IS this possible?

 

[iMacDragon]

I believe it needs to be done via family sharing, which means that the main account becomes responsible for app/music/video downloads for all the linked accounts, so unless new news comes to light it seems not.

 

[gsmornot]

I have just recently turned on Family Sharing to get ready for Apple Music with my wife and kids. The only option I see that you have if you go this route is to share or not share the things you buy with all of them. As iMacDragon says, you will hold the payment method for each of those people going forward. You will as well get a shared reminders folder, shared calendar and shared Photostream, all of which you can ignore. If you go this route and your friends and family make purchases you will need to work out with them a payment system of some kind. Apple has done their best to make this as controlled as possible to make you want to keep access close to home.

Prior to this family share setup we each had our own iCloud logins but shared the iTunes login (mine) for access to the app store and music library. Now each of us has a login of our own. Purchases by each of us going forward can be shared with the family similar to the past but now when the kids go off on their own we will remove them from the family share and they will only take what they purchased and I will lose access (I think) to that content. It will be several years from now so maybe things will change but if I want the 4 of us here to have access to the Apple Music family plan I am forced to change the way we operate.

 

[Menel]

Hi, I am planning to sign up for this feature and share my "family" with my sister, brother, and three other regular friends. I trust my friends, but is this safe to do? I have not tried the family feature yet, and I do not want to share anything (photos, music, files, app downloads, etc) with any of them except the right to use Apple Music. I also do not want them to be able to purchase things using my credit card without my permission.

IS this possible?

Yes. You can set it where you have to approve purchases to prevent that.

But when it comes time that they want an app... it has to hit your card. So you might want some compensation process, maybe through paypal gifts or something.

Family requires a single, unified payment method.

Be more hassle than I'd want.

 

[gsmornot]

Yes. You can set it where you have to approve purchases to prevent that.

But when it comes time that they want an app... it has to hit your card. So you might want some compensation process, maybe through paypal gifts or something.

Family requires a single, unified payment method.

Be more hassle than I'd want.

How do you setup so that adults are prompted for approval? If you use real birthdays it will only include that restriction if your a child.

 

[Menel]

How do you setup so that adults are prompted for approval? If you use real birthdays it will only include that restriction if your a child.

oh, that maybe so. *shrug*
Just checked mine, looks like can only toggle parent/guardian status for my wife. Choose whether she can approve for kids, but not whether hers needs approval.

Yea... OP answer maybe nope.

 

[gsmornot]

oh, that maybe so. *shrug*
Just checked mine, looks like can only toggle parent/guardian status for my wife. Choose whether she can approve for kids, but not whether hers needs approval.

Yea... OP answer maybe nope.

Yep. In this deal you are either family or you are "family". No matter which... you have to act like family. Ha.

 

[VSMacOne]

I need to do some more recent reading of Family Sharing, but from what I saw last year there were a lot of issues with it in iOS. If Apple is going to force us to use Family sharing for the Apple Music family plan, they need to make sure that it's going to work for all apps.