[hopmedic]

I really think if its family that is not a tos violation considering you pay for that service. Family gold account with one primary makes it hard for the others to get a music pass. Now sharing outside your family with friends is just wrong! Netflix was meant to be one acount in a household any way.

I'm not sure a judge would accept "I really think" as evidence in a court of law. I think he'll look at the terms of service that you agreed to, and what they say, without asking what you think of them.

I understand the feelings. Like I've said, it's not the best situation right now. And as far as a family gold pass, I don't have an Xbox, so I didn't even know there was such a thing... Makes me wonder why they don't do something similar with music, though...

[hopmedic]

Although, maybe they couldn't get the music publishers to agree to a family deal. I don't know.

[TheDvlsAdvc8]

This could be really simple and handled entirely by microsoft on the backend. Allow a microsoft account to designate a certain number of children accounts... . When an app is purchased the first time by anyone in the group, full price is paid. When the same app is purchased by another member of the group, provide a discount.

With music its similarly simple. The children microsoft accounts can get access to music pass for a discount.

Providers still make more money, and families get a volume discount. This also encourages the use of a single ecosystem... so any loss from full app purchases is made up in greater volume that is created by the discount incentive.

As more and more smart phones are "cloud enabled" and it has become more and more clumsy to share a purchasing account, I think we'll see a model like this. Microsoft would do well to get ahead of the game.

[hopmedic]

This could be really simple and handled entirely by microsoft on the backend. Allow a microsoft account to designate a certain number of children accounts... . When an app is purchased the first time by anyone in the group, full price is paid. When the same app is purchased by another member of the group, provide a discount.

With music its similarly simple. The children microsoft accounts can get access to music pass for a discount.

Providers still make more money, and families get a volume discount. This also encourages the use of a single ecosystem... so any loss from full app purchases is made up in greater volume that is created by the discount incentive.

As more and more smart phones are "cloud enabled" and it has become more and more clumsy to share a purchasing account, I think we'll see a model like this. Microsoft would do well to get ahead of the game.

It might sound that simple, but since Microsoft doesn't own music, they can't arbitrarily decide how many accounts would get access to it. They would have to negotiate that with the owners of the music. They only have the ability to work within the rights that they negotiated.

[nathanb131]

This could be really simple and handled entirely by microsoft on the backend. Allow a microsoft account to designate a certain number of children accounts... . When an app is purchased the first time by anyone in the group, full price is paid. When the same app is purchased by another member of the group, provide a discount.

With music its similarly simple. The children microsoft accounts can get access to music pass for a discount.

Providers still make more money, and families get a volume discount. This also encourages the use of a single ecosystem... so any loss from full app purchases is made up in greater volume that is created by the discount incentive.

As more and more smart phones are "cloud enabled" and it has become more and more clumsy to share a purchasing account, I think we'll see a model like this. Microsoft would do well to get ahead of the game.

This is what I was hoping for when I switched from android to wp8, switched my wife from flip phone to wp8 and got us and my kids ( who live with me part time) xboxes specifically to chat via Kinect.

Looked forward to being 'all-in' in the MS ecosystem and be able to share the same music, SkyDrive,Skype, office apps, etc natively across all devices, etc. Basically I'm their dream customer as they seem to be pushing their family friendliness with things like kidzone and Xbox live family accounts.

Got a $99 Xbox live family pass, good deal for the 4 of us. Can't Skype to my kids Kinect from my 8x yet as far as I can tell. Xbox music doesn't have a family plan so we couldn't upload both our collections in one common place. We are required to have two separate accounts (on top of Xbox live) and then have to figure out who's music pass will be the one to sync with the laptops and Xbox.... Oh the 'Cloud storage' is confusing at best, playlist syncing across devices sucks right now. Can only download offline music by album, not playlist? One thing that DOES sync and share flawlessly is OneNote! Hope that same level of sharing starts to filter through the rest... Can anyone here even comprehend why we can't have Xbox live on a WIN7 PC?! Web access would be just fine!

I pay rhapsody the $15 instead of 10 per month to have the same playlists across all our devices. My personal collection remains on Amazon. If MS ACTUALLY offered strong cloud storage like amazon AND Xbox music pass where we could share ONE family account, I'd gladly pay 15 or 20 per month for simplifying our life.

I really hope they close this circle before apple gets music streaming/cloud-storage right. Not that I'd ever go apple but I want MS to succeed in this. I was so ready to be all in, if just me then maybe. But my wife is kind of a Luddite and is the prototypical apple customer who doesn't want to think about tech, just wants it to work. Thankfully she doesn't care for apple and trusts me as the cto in our house. It's not people like me who will make win8 succeed. It's people like HER who show how powerful AND easy the tech is to her non tech friends who all think that apple is the only way to get into the cloud. When I'm around those people if I do a voice command someone ALWAYS asks if I'm talking to Siri! So the last thing people like me need is to try to show those close to us a magical non-apple tech experience only to have it NOT WORK like you said it would!

Come on MS, help me help you then shut up and take my money!

[Big Supes]

And what you're doing is breaking the law. You're violating the Netflix TOS, and to use the content outside of the TOS is theft. This one's even more cut and dry than the family sharing, which, admittedly with an XBox in play, has some gray to it if you want my opinion. Your friends using your Netflix account is stealing, and the penalty is up to $150,000 per infringed work in a civil court, and $250,000 and 5 years in jail if it were to go to criminal charges. And do NOT think that the movie industry wouldn't pursue something even as "innocent" as you think this might be. They've got a history of it. Not using it to its "full potential," as you put it, is costing Netflix potential customers. Why would they pay when they can steal so easily? It could land someone in jail, or in bankruptcy court (but the bankruptcy would not erase the penalties, if I understand right).

Wow. Lets be honest, sharing something is not theft. I guess it would be ethically wrong in the eyes of the entertainment industry for people to 'car share' if they were making cars or running public transport services instead. Heck, they'd probably argue that sharing your pizza with a friend negatively effects pizza sales, if they were financially invested.

Let's look at this objectively... Microsoft evades paying 151,000,000 per annum in taxes, here in the UK. Amazon and Starbucks also evade paying millions every year. Lastly, can you guess where Netflix's European base is? Yep, you got - Luxembourg. They're also not paying the British public millions per annum - what is owed to them. Now - who is the thief here exactly??

[rdubmu]

This is something that I want as well, my wife will not buy a windows phone until then. We can not share apps yet the most popular phone (iPhone) can. Because of this my next device will probably be an iPhone.

[philxor]

Wow. Lets be honest, sharing something is not theft. I guess it would be ethically wrong in the eyes of the entertainment industry for people to 'car share' if they were making cars or running public transport services instead. Heck, they'd probably argue that sharing your pizza with a friend negatively effects pizza sales, if they were financially invested.

Let's look at this objectively... Microsoft evades paying 151,000,000 per annum in taxes, here in the UK. Amazon and Starbucks also evade paying millions every year. Lastly, can you guess where Netflix's European base is? Yep, you got - Luxembourg. They're also not paying the British public millions per annum - what is owed to them. Now - who is the thief here exactly??

I don't agree with the fire and brimstone you will be fined 150K, etc. But I agree with hopmedic in this instance. What you are doing with Netflix is considered theft of service the same as if you hooked a cable splitter up to your neighbors cable and ran a cable across the lawn. The terms of service are clear in those regards. Account sharing is a fairly large loss of revenue for Netflix. Corporations suck for the most part but it doesn't change the facts.

[hopmedic]

Wow. Lets be honest, sharing something is not theft.

Legally, you're wrong. It is. You've violated the terms of service by allowing access, and your friends have accessed an account that is not theirs, against terms of service. They have stolen content. Yes, it is. And yes, the penalties are exactly what I stated. Look it up.

I don't agree with the fire and brimstone you will be fined 150K, etc. But I agree with hopmedic in this instance. What you are doing with Netflix is considered theft of service the same as if you hooked a cable splitter up to your neighbors cable and ran a cable across the lawn. The terms of service are clear in those regards. Account sharing is a fairly large loss of revenue for Netflix. Corporations suck for the most part but it doesn't change the facts.

You might not agree with the fire and brimstone, but the music industry is one industry that has put fangs into the law, and has pursued it with a vengeance. I can't recall for certain if the movie industry has done so or not, but it wouldn't surprise me, given as organized as they are. It doesn't mean every case results in the maximum penalty, and I didn't say that every case would. I simply stated what the maximum penalties are.

[Mystictrust]

Xbox Music does allow up to three separate devices to use a pass, as long as the devices are using the same Microsoft Account, so if you shared the same Microsoft Account, you could share one pass.

+1

I came in here to post just this. It's not a big deal, even if the Microsoft Account is used for email by one person: Have the other person un-sync email from that account on their phone and just add their own. I know I've read of at least one person doing this on these forums. It sounds like it would be great for married couples - just start a separate Microsoft Account as one access point for app purchases and xbox music subscription, with a password known to both, and link it up to both phones.

[evilrobot]

This is something that I want as well, my wife will not buy a windows phone until then. We can not share apps yet the most popular phone (iPhone) can. Because of this my next device will probably be an iPhone.

Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but I just wanted to add that if you have a WP and an iPhone you can use the same music pass on both devices (or two iPhones). Pretty lame that you can share a music pass on two iPhones but not on two Windows Phones.

[gsquared]

Could have picked up two Xbox Music passes for less than the cost of one normally priced a few days back from MSFT. You can actually get them pretty cheap off of eBay. I go my last yearly pass for under $60.00. MSFT was selling them for under $50.00.

[tk-093]

Check out the front page. MS Just released a seperate XBox Music app. I wonder if that will solve anything?

[JPDVM2014]

Check out the front page. MS Just released a seperate XBox Music app. I wonder if that will solve anything?

It does, my wife and I have been sharing my music pass since yesterday. It works perfectly. The only issue I have found, is that when she downloads music, it shows in my shuffle because it is added to the cloud collection. I believe there is a way to exclude cloud collection from shuffle, but me and my wife like similar music for the most part, so I'll probably just leave it.

[John Lamoureux]

So how can I get this to work? Four family members and four WP8 phones. Xbox music says I can use it across four devices...do I have to set up each phone with the same MSFT account to use it, or can I just log into the app only on the phone? They really need to simply this for families.

[Reid Narkunas]

I'm also interested in sharing this across two Windows Phones, anybody had any luck with that with the new app, I don't seem to be able to get it to work with multiple phones. Thanks.

[Mark-F]

I'm also interested in sharing this across two Windows Phones, anybody had any luck with that with the new app, I don't seem to be able to get it to work with multiple phones. Thanks.

Same here. Can anyone provide instructions on how this can be done (or whether it's a dead-end)?

[Demonchld]

Honestly who gives 2 ****s about tos no one reads them anyway. And no one also cares about fines and penaltys. Just allow us to share easily either way people will find a way around it by either downloading music with one of the many avaible music downloaders in the App Store.

[anony_mouse]

As a developer, I don't think I'd take too kindly to the super monster software conglomerate telling me that from now on I get one purchase price (of which they already take 30%) for the sale of my app to a whole family, where I had been getting it from each person who wanted my app. My response would probably be along the lines of "just who do you think you are that you think you can tell me what I am allowed to sell my apps for, and under what conditions???"

Microsoft own the store - they already do exactly that.
This new world where developers sell their apps through three major app stores (and a few small ones) has pros and cons. The cons include that you have to accept the terms, conditions and costs imposed by the app store owners. It would be interesting to think about a new model which would be more equitable for developers (while still appealing to users). Android is the place to start for this, as it allows installation from sources other than the Play Store (although this is disabled by default). iOS and WP only allow installation from the Apple and MS app stores respectively, so you really are stuck with it.

[anony_mouse]

Honestly who gives 2 ****s about tos no one reads them anyway. And no one also cares about fines and penaltys. Just allow us to share easily either way people will find a way around it by either downloading music with one of the many avaible music downloaders in the App Store.

One option is to buy CDs, tapes, vinyl or MP3s. There is no technical means to stop you sharing those.

[hopmedic]

Honestly who gives 2 ****s about tos no one reads them anyway. And no one also cares about fines and penaltys. Just allow us to share easily either way people will find a way around it by either downloading music with one of the many avaible music downloaders in the App Store.

Maybe you don't. Some of us actually do like to live within the law, though.

Microsoft own the store - they already do exactly that.

No, they don't. They allow you to install apps to your own devices. Not everyone else's.

[anony_mouse]

No, they don't. They allow you to install apps to your own devices. Not everyone else's.

I think either I misunderstood your point, or you misunderstood mine. My point was the Microsoft own the app store for WP, and they decide what terms and conditions are available to developers, and what terms and conditions are available to users. If they decide that a purchase applies to a whole family, not just an individual person, there's not much the developer can do about it except withdraw their app.
If that wasn't relevant to your post, then please accept my apologies.

[hopmedic]

I think either I misunderstood your point, or you misunderstood mine. My point was the Microsoft own the app store for WP, and they decide what terms and conditions are available to developers, and what terms and conditions are available to users. If they decide that a purchase applies to a whole family, not just an individual person, there's not much the developer can do about it except withdraw their app.
If that wasn't relevant to your post, then please accept my apologies.

Now I see... Thought you meant that they presently allow family installs.
But yes, a change to the dev T&C would anger many, so you might see many apps leave.