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Multiple Apple IDs and Apple Music?

palebluedot

palebluedot

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 29, 2008
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For those of us who have multiple Apple IDs (e.g. one for the store and an iCloud), what are people planning on doing for Apple Music?

This is a well documented problem - a lot of long time users were required to sign up for a new Mac.com or Me.com ID separate from iTunes and thus music and apps got tied to one and iCloud email addys and data to another. Apple has never released a merge option. No big deal, since you can use Apple Store with one ID and iCloud with another... until...

Apple Music. Now if I want to do a family plan, and I invite my family members, do I invite their iCloud ID or their Apple Store ID (which has their music)? This seems like the ID situation could get complicated again.

Any thoughts?
 
palebluedot said:
For those of us who have multiple Apple IDs (e.g. one for the store and an iCloud), what are people planning on doing for Apple Music?

This is a well documented problem - a lot of long time users were required to sign up for a new Mac.com or Me.com ID separate from iTunes and thus music and apps got tied to one and iCloud email addys and data to another. Apple has never released a merge option. No big deal, since you can use Apple Store with one ID and iCloud with another... until...

Apple Music. Now if I want to do a family plan, and I invite my family members, do I invite their iCloud ID or their Apple Store ID (which has their music)? This seems like the ID situation could get complicated again.

Any thoughts?
Click to expand...


My setup is similar but I think you have one additional complication of each family member having both iTunes and iCloud logins and on each those are different?

Here each person already had iCloud logins so that each person could have drive space and email and iMessage, etc. We all shared an iTunes login. Recently I moved everyone to their own iTunes login which matches their iCloud login. I had to add my payment details for each person so I pay for the purchases. When I did the setup for family sharing it asked which ID I wanted to share purchases from and then asked about my iCloud ID. So, it asked for both. It bills to iTunes ID for for everything else uses my iCloud ID. Hope this helps some but I may not have fully followed your question. Still trying to answer a few of mine as well.
 
gsmornot said:
My setup is similar but I think you have one additional complication of each family member having both iTunes and iCloud logins and on each those are different?

Here each person already had iCloud logins so that each person could have drive space and email and iMessage, etc. We all shared an iTunes login. Recently I moved everyone to their own iTunes login which matches their iCloud login. I had to add my payment details for each person so I pay for the purchases. When I did the setup for family sharing it asked which ID I wanted to share purchases from and then asked about my iCloud ID. So, it asked for both. It bills to iTunes ID for for everything else uses my iCloud ID. Hope this helps some but I may not have fully followed your question. Still trying to answer a few of mine as well.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply! Correct, my wife and I each have a iTunes account and separate iCloud account because we are login time users of both. I wish Apple would just let you merge (or transfer iCloud emails). What did you end up doing about your separate iCloud and iTunes account for yourself? Is the iTunes account the "master" account for Apple Music and you just ignored your iCloud account?
 
I posted a step-by-step on how to move from a single shared iTunes account to Family Sharing here:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apple-music-no-more-sharing-apple-id.1896272/#post-21529566

thepalebluedot, your setup is even simpler to move to family sharing. just make sure the "family purchases" iTunes account on each user is different (in your case - the separate iTunes accounts you are already using), and then it will all work as expected.

there are no downsides.
 
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retroneo said:
I posted a step-by-step on how to move from a single shared iTunes account to Family Sharing here:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apple-music-no-more-sharing-apple-id.1896272/#post-21529566

thepalebluedot, your setup is even simpler to move to family sharing. just make sure the "family purchases" iTunes account on each user is different (in your case - the separate iTunes accounts you are already using), and then it will all work as expected.

there are no downsides.
Click to expand...

My only question is - does iCloud come into play with Apple Music in any way? Is there a negative because you now have an Apple Connect/Music account on your iTunes Apple Account and your iCloud Account is a completely separate account ?
 
Why can't Apple just have a separate family sharing setting for music? I have kids who use their IDs to manage what they want and pay for what they want. However I would like to pay for Apple Music for them and the wife.
 
whsbuss said:
Why can't Apple just have a separate family sharing setting for music? I have kids who use their IDs to manage what they want and pay for what they want. However I would like to pay for Apple Music for them and the wife.
Click to expand...

People would buy it once and add 6 "family" members. I have extended family that would like to join in my plan but were not going through the trouble. Apple will collect more money due to this fact.
 
chrispfeiffer21 said:
Apple Music pretty much ignores the iCloud ID, or at least so I found, maybe someone else has better luck than me. I really need to just take the hit and use only one...PITA though...
Click to expand...

I agree. TBH it is a no go for most of us because you cant move @icloud/me/mac.com emails. If you could, I'd transfer in a heart beat. I wish someone from Apple would listen, but the users who are affected are all the old Mac guys who have long since been surpassed by your average consumer.
 
chrispfeiffer21 said:
I think the issue lies in content licensing, whereby apps aren't allowed to be transferred from one Apple ID to another...though my knowledge on content laws is a little...well, brief...
Click to expand...

I agree and another part is probably the lack of automation in the process. If they would have to deal with this move manually in any way its not worth the cost. I don't think they have a good automated system to handle the transfer of license from one party to another. It's no matter that you are both parties, in this scenario different addresses might as well be different people.
 
I wish Apple would find a way to let us merge old iTunes accounts with @me icloud accounts. Long standing complaint of mine.

It hasn't caused me any issues to date, but I bet it will cause a problem one day.
 
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gsmornot said:
Wont this do it? I have not tried it because for the moment I like to have my iTunes account address different than my iCloud address.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202667
Click to expand...

Sadly, no. If you try to "change" your ID to an iCloud ID (or any email that ends in @icloud.com, @me.com, etc. it says that the account is already an Apple ID/already taken. At the very least, I wish they would lets u migrate iCloud email addresses to different Apple IDs. There is no reason why that couldn't be done (no licensing issues, etc.).
 
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