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December 10, 2015

Google Play Music Family Plan

Google Play Music started to offer a new family plan: $14.99/month for up to 6 family members, just like Apple Music. You and 5 other family members can subscribe to Google Play Music All Access and keep your own playlists, radio stations, ratings and recommendations. The new family plans are available in the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, France and Germany, while also requiring regular Google accounts (no Google Apps, for now). You can only sign up from the Google Play Music app for Android, but everything else works for all the platforms supported by Google Play Music.



Google says you can "share a payment method on Google Play so your family can purchase apps, movies, books and music." It looks like Google will add a family sharing feature for Google Play, so that purchases are shared between family members, just like in iOS. Hopefully, sharing the payment method will be optional.

7 comments:

  1. You can't have a Google Music Family plan if you have a Google Apps account. However, Google Apps does allow you to purchase the individual plan with no problems; yet another arbitrary restriction on Google Apps accounts.
    See this URL: https://goo.gl/0cBjRM

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  2. This is just another reason to go back to using my old GMail account. But has anyone figured out how to migrate back? Especially for things like Play store purchases and G+. Google Takeout is great, but I also need a Google Putback!!!

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    1. Basically, it really can't be done. There is no way to transfer purchases to another gmail account. You can download any music purchases and re-upload them, but it will count against the limit, whereas normally they don't. Apps, well basically the only way to get them on another account is to re-purchase them. Bottom line, it's setup so it can't effectively be done. This move IMO was just over the top in how arbitrary it was. If they let you purchase an individual account, there isn't any good reason to keep you from signing up for a family account. This isn't a beta product so they can't use the reasoning they did for Project Fi. They have certainly had plenty of time to figure it out (this was announced in September). It's just ridiculous.

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  3. Nice concept to provide music at low cost which gives more fun to music lovers.

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  4. Now you can resize all yours photos in google photos. I have more 5 gigas storage!

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  5. I'm considering going the Family Plan route for my family.

    They say "You can use the family payment method to purchase content like" and they go on to list Apps, Books, Movies, Games, TV and Magazines. But ironically Music is not in the list.

    They do mention on another support page "Any content family members purchase or upload won't be shared between family members." So I wonder if that includes the aforementioned list?

    If I buy a book using the family payment method will my wife be able to access it?

    Is the only thing that's shared the Music Subscription? And everything else is still limited to the account that bought it - even if they used the family payment method?!

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