Can’t access Apple Music through family sharing

Problem44 wrote:

We have Family sharing, but when my husband tries to access Apple Music, he gets a message that says that it is only authorized to play on one computer. How can this be??

That suggests you are sharing an Apple ID, which defeats family sharing entirely. Each person should be logged in to their own Apple ID on their own devices.

I was able to figure it out. Go into your phone settings, go to Apple Music towards the bottom. Once there click join Apple Music it will ask you to subscribe for the $10.99 but then once you do it will say no need you are apart of family sharing you get it free! This fixed the issue on both my wife and daughter’s phone but had to do it to each phone separately. Hope this helps!!

Same here. My wife and I both have been able to access the plan but neither of my kids can. Then suddenly this morning my wife lost access too. It’s ridiculous there is no obvious published solution to this.

What can I do to fix this?

Seems logging out of media & purchases and then back in worked for me too.

Hi was anyone able to give me a solution for this. I have tried everything and nothing is working. My family have the folders but cannot get there music they have downloaded

What I did was go into the individual family members’ devices abd turnes on purchase sharing on each device, not just on the organizer’s phone. Hope this helps

let me share screenshots with you so it will be clear.

I have what may only be a similar problem. We bought a set of HomePod minis in our effort to get rid of Alexa. My wife bought them under her username to take advantage of the 6-month free music subscription. When I realized it's cheaper in the long run to use the Apple Music family plan that (supposedly) would allow us to share music and, I expected, use a common library I had her quit that subscription after a few days and signed us up for the shared plan instead (4 bucks a month cheaper too).

It should have been no surprise to find that actually sharing anything except the license itself can be a nightmare. In typical Apple fashion I had to cruise these help forums and search for answers since Apple is never forthcoming with setup instructions, requirements, and troubleshooting advice. Lots of fanboys have disagreed with this but those that do have never drunk another brand of koolaid. But I digress.

What I found was a slightly older article that says we can only share music that was purchased or leased from Apple. Seems to me the only reason for this is to make it more convenient to either lock your new account into giving control of each family members content over to Apple in typical Apple fashion. Since my library is local to my system and hers there is no technical reason why this should be necessary. If this is true then I will have to go through everything I have that she maybe interested in and re-upload it to her (supposedly) shared account. Thereby increasing the load on our also shared iCloud account by doubling the space necessary.

I haven't yet tried the techniques offered here to give her access to the content I am supposedly able to share but, if true, I have a lot of work to do to make several DAYS worth of music I owned before I came over to the dark side. And, yes, the longer I use it the more I come to understand that it truly can be dark over here.

So, to make a short story long, I invite someone here to tell me how wrong I am about being able to share all my music content with her...I look forward to the help that Apple should have supplied in a file full of knowledge along with the subscription.

I assume the reason she isn’t able to access the shared family Apple Music plan yet is because you stated that she signed up for an individual Apple Music plan that was offering 6 months free. Even though you had her cancel the subscription because you realized you guys could share an account and it would be $4 cheaper a month she still has the individual Apple Music plan for the six months and until that runs out she won’t be able to use the family Apple Music subscription. In order to fix this go to https://reportaproblem.apple.com & have her log in under her account. Once you’ve done that hit the id like to request a refund option & then select the individual Apple Music plan (I know she hasn’t paid for it because she canceled it during the free trial so she won’t get a refund but it’ll end the 6 month free trial allowing her to use the family Apple Music plan with you)

I assume the reason she isn’t able to access the shared family Apple Music plan yet is because you stated that she signed up for an individual Apple Music plan that was offering 6 months free. Even though you had her cancel the subscription because you realized you guys could share an account and it would be $4 cheaper a month she still has the individual Apple Music plan for the six months and until that runs out she won’t be able to use the family Apple Music subscription. In order to fix this go to https://reportaproblem.apple.com & have her log in under her account. Once you’ve done that hit the id like to request a refund option & then select the individual Apple Music plan (I know she hasn’t paid for it because she canceled it during the free trial so she won’t get a refund but it’ll end the 6 month free trial allowing her to use the family Apple Music plan with you)

Problem44 wrote:

We have Family sharing, but when my husband tries to access Apple Music, he gets a message that says that it is only authorized to play on one computer. How can this be??

That suggests you are sharing an Apple ID, which completely defeats Family Sharing. Apple IDs should never be shared, for any reason.

In Family Sharing each person should have their own Apple ID, and you won't get that error message.

I tried all of the other ideas listed above and NOTHING worked. But then I had a brainwave! I decided to delete all of my existing family members from “Family Sharing” under Settings, and then re-invite them to join. IT WORKED. XJob done!

For anyone else searching this worked for me (from the p1 post)

go into Settings ----> Name/Apple Id ---> Media & Purchases and choose sign out when you click on Media & Purchases. Stay signed out for a couple minutes then sign back in. Do this on both the head of the Apple Family's device and the family member's device.

After many hours spent with Apple personel in Store and long support phone calls to try and figure out why my Family Sharing Plan wasn't working, the suggestion to log out and back in to media and purchases worked.

Thanks . Apple need to ensure their staff receive training on the ins and outs of connection issues associated with the Family Sharing facility. Also, perhaps Apple could develop detailed on-line instructions on this issue.