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If you engage in Family Sharing with your friends, the linked accounts can purchase apps using the primary account’s credit card. Of course, the primary credit card holder can enable the Ask to Buy feature. Family Sharing is designed for families, not friends. Your friends will not be able to freely purchase apps and content if they are part of your Family Sharing network.
If you wish to save a little money on Apple Music, apps, videos, iBooks and every downloadable product that Apple sells, consider using iTunes gift cards. Stores such as Costco regularly sell iTunes gift cards at a discount. You can save more than 8% on Apple purchases using discounted gift cards. For more information, please read this article.
After choosing a plan, you are presented with the legal agreement. Tap the OK button to view the new legal agreement.
The legal agreement is displayed. You can email it. Agree to the terms to continue.
iCloud Music Library Can’t Be Enabled
First impressions are important. Unfortunately, people are welcomed to Apple Music with a confusing error message: “iCloud Music Library can’t be enabled”. The iCloud Music Library is a new feature accompanying Apple Music. It is similar to iTunes Match, but is offered free with Apple Music. It basically allows you to make Apple Music albums and songs available offline. It also works across all of your Apple devices.
New users are also welcomed to Apple Music with missing album art, even for iTunes purchases. Don’t worry, the album art will eventually appear.
If you download an album on your iPad, it will be available for download on your iPhone or other Apple device if the iCloud Music Library is enabled on that device. When you rip and import a CD into iTunes, you can download it on any of your devices using the iCloud Music Library. It is similar to iTunes Match, except it is free with Apple Music.
Music stored in the iCloud Music Library is DRM-protected. If you cancel Apple Music, you lose this library, even if you back it up. It may seem harsh, but if Apple didn’t do this, it would be like bringing an ice chest to an all-you-can-eat buffet. People would download massive amounts of music and cancel the service. Apple also needs to compensate artists when you listen to their music. They can only do this if iCloud Music Library is available to subscribers. Without DRM protection, you could play Apple Music downloads in a different player, which would bypass artist compensation. Even when you listen to music offline, Apple Music counts the playback and compensates the artist.
Don’t worry about the iCloud Music Library for now. We will explore this feature later in the article. You can activate it later from the Settings app. When you choose to make music available offline, Apple Music can take you directly to this setting.
Tell Us What You’re Into
Apple Music offers recommendations for music. To facilitate this feature, you need to communicate your musical preferences by tapping on “bubbles”. The categories are a bit vague. Don’t sweat this step too much. It will not prevent you from accessing any music, it will just inform recommendations for music. I actually think the bubble interface is kind of cool. You can tap on a bubble multiple times to indicate the strength of your preference. The bubble will get bigger after each tap, but will reset after three taps. You can hold your finger down on any genre or artists you don’t like.
After you have made your genre selections, tap Next on the top right of the screen. You will see a screen with artists. Tap on a few artists until the “You” circle is complete, then tap Done.
If the music recommendations are a bit off, you can redo the bubble selection process. Tap on the user icon on the top right.
Now tap on Choose Artists For You.
This will take you back to the musical preference bubbles. If you wish to reset your preferences, tap on reset on the bottom right of any “bubble screen”.
That’s it! You are now free to explore Apple Music. (continue…)