[xcsdm]

I'm not sure where the best place to post this question is.

For years, my wife, myself, and our children have shared a single iTunes account. This works well for us. My wife and I know the password, and our children do not. We each have our own iCloud account, and share the iTunes and App Store account. We don't see each others e-mail and messages, but we share the app catalog of $100's over the course of years of iOS usage.

Family sharing sounds good, but it doesn't share IAPs. This is a problem for us. We currently subscribe to Beats Music using our AT&T plan ($14.99 for the family) which is the same price as the family iTunes Music plan. For reasons I won't detail here, I'm not thrilled with the Beats Music experience. BUT, the iTunes Music family plan relies on Family Sharing.

Is there a way to have cake and eat it too?
-Keep existing apps/IAPs
-Use iTunes Family Sharing/iTunes Music
-Have future purchases tied to main iTunes account

My Idea:
Set up each of our iCloud accounts without credit information (so no billing can occur.)
Set up main iTunes account as Family Sharing (master, main, whatever it is called.)
Sign out of individual account/Sign in to main account for purchases
Sign back in as individual account after purchase to use Music/Match

It's complicated use, but if it accomplishes the above goals, it's worth it.
We have not crossed the 5 device boundary, so I don't think there is any ethical issue to our usage. (3 iPhones, 1 iPad, 1 iPod)

Thoughts and Suggestions?

[Bigeric23]

Just my opinion: I would strive to make my setup far less complicated, therefore, less aggravation or opportunity for issues. Yes, you can “work around” just about anything, but is it truly worth it?

[Ledsteplin]

That does sound a bit complicated. I would stay with what's been working for you. You can do Family Sharing and keep the apps you have. But to update them some of you might have to sign out of one account, then in the old one. I don't think switching to Family Sharing will cause you to lose paid apps. My Wife and I share an iTunes ID with separate iCloud,iMessage, and FaceTime ID's. No kids though. We're not likely to subscribe to the new music streaming service with Apple. Spotify works great for free. IMO, Apple has made everything too complicated for most people.

[cwbcpa]

I'm not sure I understand why you don't want to do family sharing. We have 5 users in the family. We used to do something similar to what you are doing. Now we use family sharing. We share apps and music purchased with no problem and maintain our own individual Apple ID. We will probably do the apple music service for $14.99 and share that as well. I wasn't sure about the family sharing at first but it has worked out very well for my family.


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[Ledsteplin]

I'm not sure I understand why you don't want to do family sharing. We have 5 users in the family. We used to do something similar to what you are doing. Now we use family sharing. We share apps and music purchased with no problem and maintain our own individual Apple ID. We will probably do the apple music service for $14.99 and share that as well. I wasn't sure about the family sharing at first but it has worked out very well for my family.


Sent from my iPhone 6 Plus using Tapatalk

Will anyone lose anything by switching to Family Sharing? That's one thing the OP was concerned about.

[cwbcpa]

Will anyone lose anything by switching to Family Sharing? That's one thing the OP was concerned about.

I don't think so. The only issue could be around music. I don't know how this will be after the new service comes out. Under Music Match only music purchased on iTunes is available to the whole family. In other words if I upload music from a cd to my iTunes account my wife would not have the option to listen to it on her iPhone since she is signed in under her own Apple ID. At least that seems to be the case. Maybe someone else knows better. With the new service that shouldn't matter since we will have access to all of iTunes and can create playlists from that.

We have zero issues with apps though. Those share perfectly.


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