icloud question

I have two Mac book pro's and two new iPhone 6 plus phones.

I would like to be able to share music & Photos & calendars between all these. Just for my wife and myself.
I looks like setting up family sharing in icloud is the best option.
My itunes has a lot of music that was ripped from cd's will this store ok in the icloud or will it only accept music purchased from apple?
I'm guessing that I can leave a copy of the music on mac as I use time machine for back up?
If we add music or photos how is that shared between our devices?
Is this the best way to accomplish what I want?

Thanks

V6Pony said:

I have two Mac book pro's and two new iPhone 6 plus phones.

I would like to be able to share music & Photos & calendars between all these. Just for my wife and myself.
I looks like setting up family sharing in icloud is the best option.
My itunes has a lot of music that was ripped from cd's will this store ok in the icloud or will it only accept music purchased from apple?
I'm guessing that I can leave a copy of the music on mac as I use time machine for back up?
If we add music or photos how is that shared between our devices?
Is this the best way to accomplish what I want?

Click to expand...

Hmmm... I just read up on iCloud Family Sharing, and this doesn't appear to be the way to go for sharing media you've ripped off your own CDs. It appears to apply only to iTunes purchases according to this quote:

Once you’ve set up Family Sharing, all the songs, albums, movies, TV shows, books, and apps ever purchased by family members are immediately available to everyone else in the group. And, of course, so are new purchases.

https://www.apple.com/icloud/family-sharing/

Click to expand...

What you may have to do is either sync all your music across all the iPhones and MacBooks, or use iTunes Match. That costs $25 a year and what it does is match all the existing music in your library and pairs it to a copy available in iTunes that you can access via iCloud. I don't think there's any family sharing option with this, but as long as all your devices are logged into the same iTunes account, they'll be available that way.
https://www.apple.com/itunes/itunes-match/

That's the way I read it as well. I may place a call to Apple today and get a answer. Which I will share.

Thanks