It should not take five days and multiple calls to support lasting over six hours to set up a family account.
The long/short story : I had one icloud account set up on a Mac. It had my credit card information. My wife had another icould account set up on her iPod (completely normal) but she had a different credit card number entered for purchases. When I created a family account I was able to add all family members through the interface. However, when I joined Apple Music paid membership, only I was able to use the “pro” features. None of my family members were. Support had me jump through all the hoops:
- reboot
- restart
- delete family
- add family
- I was told after changing the settings to wait up to 2 days for the change to kick in? That was hilarious.
- restart iPod, iPad, iPhone, MacBook multiple times
- log out and log in probably at least sixty times across 5 devices
- wait, wait, wait on hold and more waiting
Still nothing, Apple music support was clueless. I suggested to them that the issue may be that the credit cards are different for my wife and myself but they blew it off. Finally when I said I would do it myself, they said OK, try it. This worked. I had to change the credit cards to match and only then the entire family was able to use Apple Music. It did not take 2 days for the change to take effect. It was instantaneous. I asked for a free month of Apple Music for my multi-day trouble and was denied.
The only reason I am using Apple Music is because they have the family explicit filter. I would switch in a heartbeat to any other provider but they lack this simple feature.