Google to expand its family plans beyond just Play Music

With more and more families adopting an increasing variety of devices in the home it only seems logical for big software makers like Apple and Google to work on sharing plans.

While Apple has had a Family Sharing plan for a while now, Google has only offered such option for its Music service; but that may be about to change…

A report from CNET is in fact suggesting that Google is launching a “Google Play Family Library” plan soon, which will allow up to six people to essentially share a single Play account. In this way, all family members will have access to the account holder’s apps, videos, music and books.

Of course, the idea has been thought out so that the holder still retains some sort of control over what the others can and cannot do, so that, say, the movie catalogue can be tweaked and tailored accordingly, and if you want to hide certain artists from your music, you can do so (think customized content for kids).

You don’t have to pay extra to sign up for the Family Library plan, apparently, but members outside the account owner will still have to enter their own credit card details, so to avoid any spending shenanigans due to the possibly overwhelming amount of people handling the account; and, every time a purchase is made, Google will send a receipt so to keep things in check.

The report doesn’t mention any specific date, but says that we should more or less expect the feature to be rolled out “later this month” which gives us a little over two weeks to wait at the most. As far as countries go, an original story mentioned some specific ones, but it looks like those were incorrect according to CNET, leaving us with a little uncertainty on that. We’ll make sure to keep you updated as we learn more.