Can you share apps/music between different itunes accounts and if so how??

[Loueytb3]

DH and I have one itunes account which I set up ages ago pre-iphones. All our devices sync to it (iphone each, ipad and an ipod touch for DCs) so they all have access to the same music/apps etc. This seeemed to work fine until icloud came along.

Now, the problem is that I end up with DH's (work) contacts on my phone and vice-versa. He gets notifications and calendar entries from my phone which then go off during meetings and he wonders WTF they are for.

In an ideal world, we would have 2 separate itunes accounts and then we would be able to keep calendars/contacts separate. But can we do that and share the music already loaded onto the existing itunes account? And is there anyway to share all the apps we've downloaded?

marking my -ungeeky--place to find out the answer...

see I can't even type well

You have two options:

1Keep same apple ID
You can turn off icloud in the phone settings so no calender, contacts will be shared with icloud and between devices, however if you reset your phone or upgrade iOS you lose this back up. this way you can still share the same apps when syncing with itunes, and you will be able to share the same music too.

2 Seperate apple ID:
If you have seperate apple id's you cannot share apps, that is that. Calender and contacts would not be an issue.

When it comes to music, its a licience thing, however what you can do, is remove all your music from your itunes storage area, if you have a mac it will be something like /music/itunes/ituneslibrary/ (ish) and copy them to a new location. Then delete all from itunes, if you move the files you will constantly get cannot find file errors so best to copy. Once you have done this, re-import to itunes but change the settings and uncheck the option of 'copy to itunes storage' that way all music is available to any itunes apple id that loads music the same way.

Thanks - such a shame we can't share the apps. Will have to turn off syncing with iCloud I think.

Dh and I share our apps. I've just looked at my iPad settings and my mail and contacts are linked to my apple ID and iTunes is linked to dh's id (this is under home sharing). I have had issues when I plug my iPad into our mac, but now we run iOS 5 and 6 on our devices I rarely do that. The only thing I can't seem to get it to share is any photos, unless I plug it in, which I haven't done for ages because last time I ended up with dh's bookmarks in safari . We have three iPads and two iPhones sharing one music library and app store btw. HTH!

Now I'm even more confused What is home sharing??

It's under settings and then music. My dh's apple ID is listed under home sharing which is right at the bottom of the page, this means I can use his iTunes account on my iPad and my phone. His diary appointments and reminders never come up on my phone, although I'm not sure how much he keeps in it tbh.