After a very understated teasing at Google I/O in May, the official launch of Google Play Family Library has arrived this morning. Google has announced that you’ll soon be able to share your purchases with up to 6 family members.
The plan builds on their Google Play Music family plan launched last year, which lets you share Google Play Music All Access with up to 6 members of your family. The new arrangement is in addition to that setup and will allow you to share any eligible app, game, movie, TV show, or book in the Play Store with those family members as well – but unlike the Google Play Music family plan, this Family Sharing Plan is free. You will of course have to still pay $17.99AUD per month for your Google Play Music access.
Family Managers work similarly to the Music Plan, with family members able to make payments on one shared payment source, or they can use their own payment method. You can also force some members to require approval to use that shared payment method.
Members of the family plan can also choose whether to share their purchase with the rest of the family – or keep it to themselves.
There are of course some ‘Can’ts’ with the new plan, you can’t add You can’t add TV show or Movie rentals to Family Library, nor share in-app purchases. With Google Play Books, you can’t add ‘free samples, public domain books, personal documents you uploaded, or books you rented to Family Library’.
If you want to get started head over to this link, to sign up your family members, assign a manager, payment method etc. it will be live in the next few day in Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Been a while since I so quickly went from extatic to WOT THE HELL GOOGLE!?!
I LOVE the idea of being able to share with my kids but I DO NOT want to be sharing my credit card with them! A wonderful idea well farked by consumerism. Unless there’s a way to stop them just using that card or making it so that I have to approve purchases.
‘”Use a different payment method if you want to add this to Family Library”
If you see this message, you won’t be able to add the purchase to your Family Library after you buy it.
If you want to add the purchase to your Family Library, pay using the family payment method or a gift card instead.’
– So only the parent family account counts – individual purchases don’t ‘bundle together’? Bit of a killer for this one, unless you’re starting out from scratch.
This part confuses me a little… So if I purchase with my personal credit card, however the joint credit card is on the family account, the app/movie/etc won’t be shared to the family?
That’s what I’m reading from it? :/
Me too – I’ve reached out to Google to see if I can get an explanation…
I’ve finally got access to sharing and I can confirm the payment method doesn’t seem to be making a difference. Just the way it should be, go Google!!!!
Daym.
You can only set up a family group with a personal Google Account,
not a Google for Work
or Google for Education account.
Unfortunately not.
Yeah, sucks when you have a family on a Google Apps domain.
Yeah, same problem for me – got my whole family all on a custom domain hosted by Google Apps. Hopefully they add google apps accounts in future – but I guess we’re used to being second citizens!