All Devices Separate accounts for Music and App Store

[steelfemur]

Currently a Spotify user that would like to switch to Apple Music with family sharing. We've used a primary Apple account for years where all our apps have been purchased. Each of us then has our own personal iCloud accounts that we use, with the primary account only logged into the App Store. We do it this way because I don't want purchases tied to someone's personal account, should we ever decide to remove someone from family sharing. According to Apple's site, purchases stay with the original account, even if the family sharing account paid for it.

Historically whatever account was logged into the App Store was also used for iTunes/Music and this was a deal breaker. I activated the trial of Apple Music this week and with iOS 13 I see in 'Settings > Music > Home Sharing' where our personal iCloud accounts are captured there now, and not the App Store account. However, if I'm in the Music app, click on the profile icon and select 'View Apple ID', it shows me the primary account and not my personal iCloud account.

It does seem like we're all able to simultaneously stream music, which is good. However, I noticed that a playlist created with the primary account while on my Mac synced to my iPhone, which suggests that it's actually the primary account being used on our phones and not our personal iCloud accounts. That being said, the same playlist did not sync to my wife's phone and it is setup the same way as mine... If it is in fact still sharing the one primary account for Music, I don't want my wife/kids playlists showing up in my account and vise versa so we'd have to stick with Spotify.

I can't find anything on Apple's site that confirms one way or the other. Anyone else have experience with testing this since iOS 13?

 

[Cinimod1000]

I just spent some considerable time on the same process. We have a shared primary iCloud account for all purchases, and each have our own account for mail, messaging, etc.
When researching, I had a hard time understanding how I could convert our (wife and me) home to the "Family Sharing" setup, until I came across this one Apple help document.

Use your own Apple ID for Family Sharing - Apple Support

In the second paragraph, it reads:
Confirm the Apple ID you use for purchases
After you set up or join Family Sharing, review the Apple ID you use for iTunes Store, Books Store, and App Store purchases. In most cases, this is the same Apple ID that you use everywhere. But, if you use a different Apple ID for purchases, you can enter it to automatically share purchases with your family using that Apple ID.
After you set up Family Sharing, here's how your account might look. If you check your child's account, you should see their Apple ID instead of your own.

The bolded text eventually helped me understand that this could be done, by keeping the two accounts on my phone, and the single individual accounts (only) on the rest of the family's phones (my wife). Seems to work, as I have my Apple Music playlists on my phone and Mac, and she has her own playlists (and games etc) on her iPad and phone. When she purchases an app, she is actually prompted to enter the password for the original primary account.
As I said, I just set this up two weeks ago, but so far we have not come up against any issues - but it is early days!!
Hope this helps.

 

[steelfemur]

Thanks, this is really helpful. I think I’ve duplicated your steps but ultimately it doesn’t seem to work this way for us. When my wife tries to make a purchase, for some reason it still shows her email at the purchase confirmation instead of the one she put in the family sharing box. I’ll keep messing around with it since it sounds like your experience confirms that it is possible. Not sure what step I’m missing though. Thanks again.

 

[gsmornot]

We have 4 users in our family and each of us have our own logins. We share the music subscription through Family Sharing which is tied to iCloud ID. It uses my ID as the one who pays but each person is logged in with their own ID on their device. Applications are done per user. I pay the bill since that is how family sharing works but each user has their own iTunes login. We do have access if we want to use the same app as well via sharing but generally we go get apps for ourselves. Most apps are free to get so its not like I cant easily get the app again if them leaving changes something. I set it up to be 4 people that if they wanted could go off on their own with their purchases. I want my kids to take with them what they installed on their devices. Friends will ask about this same thing when I help them and in each case they wanted to use some ID that was shared by everyone and on everyone’s device as if one person owned all of the devices. Long ago that was the only way but that changed when family sharing was introduced. Try to view each user and their related devices as separate from another in the house then with sharing connect them so they can make use of your purchase of subscriptions or paid apps.

 

[steelfemur]

We have 4 users in our family and each of us have our own logins. We share the music subscription through Family Sharing which is tied to iCloud ID. It uses my ID as the one who pays but each person is logged in with their own ID on their device. Applications are done per user. I pay the bill since that is how family sharing works but each user has their own iTunes login. We do have access if we want to use the same app as well via sharing but generally we go get apps for ourselves. Most apps are free to get so its not like I cant easily get the app again if them leaving changes something. I set it up to be 4 people that if they wanted could go off on their own with their purchases. I want my kids to take with them what they installed on their devices. Friends will ask about this same thing when I help them and in each case they wanted to use some ID that was shared by everyone and on everyone’s device as if one person owned all of the devices. Long ago that was the only way but that changed when family sharing was introduced. Try to view each user and their related devices as separate from another in the house then with sharing connect them so they can make use of your purchase of subscriptions or paid apps.

Right, I understand this. We do have our own Apple IDs For iCloud syncing purposes. Unfortunately we’ve been Apple/iPhone users since the original iPhone launched and have $100s of dollars worth of apps purchased on the original account we shared. I want any and all future purchases associated with that same account vs. fragmenting the purchases at this point. Sounds like we’ll be sticking with Spotify

Hopefully down the road Apple allows Music and News+ to have independent logins from the App Store. Appreciate the help all.

 

[steelfemur]

Bumping this to see if anyone’s found a solution with iOS 14. I’ve signed up for an Apple One Premium trial and taking another stab at getting this to work. I’ve seen a lot of posts about people concerned that separate iCloud and Music accounts would be supported but nothing about separating App Store and Music. Anyone had any luck?