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by vinceguidry 3069 days ago
Things I want from HomePod:

1) To work with only the tracks I have downloaded in my iTunes library. Currently I have to use a 3rd party music player because the stock music player won't respect my wishes in this regard.

2) To be able to turn Siri off

3) To sync with an existing audio system, so that I can play music through my home audio system in my living room, and HomePods in my bedroom and bathroom

4) To avoid the weird situation where latency causes music to not sound synced, so that if I'm listening in one room, I'm not hearing music from the other room with a half-second delay.

I am hopeful on all counts except for the first one. Apple seems dead set on forcing their idea of music enjoyment onto me. Then again, perhaps the behavior forcing me onto a third party player is/was just a bug.

4 comments

Actually I'm hoping what HomePod can do: when I come home listening to Spotify/Audible/podcast on my earphone+iPhone, HomePad auto turn on when I walk into house, the song/audiobook/podcast I'm halfway listening to on my iPhone will automatically transfer to HomePod to continue playing.
When Bluetooth is in a good mood, it'll do that. I'll have music going on my Bluetooth headset, then my home receiver will come into range and the sound will jump over. Requires my receiver to be set to the Bluetooth channel, so if it's been on the TV channel I won't hear the music.

Also sometimes it just doesn't want to switch and I'll have to do it manually.

Not a big Siri fan myself but isn't the whole point of the Homepod to combine music + Siri? From Apple.com: „...It’s the ultimate music authority, bringing together Apple Music and Siri...“

so 1) (iTunes != Apple Music) + 2) don't really make sense

They don’t have to cripple the speakers as a music player to integrate siri; siri could just work with apple music for people who want to use it. Itunes certainly manages to mix and match just fine!

Plus so much good music never made it to itunes.

For your first point is this from a Mac or iOS device? At least on my iPhone there's a Downloaded Music section that I use just to play anything I already have. Not sure if there's an equivalent for Mac's iTunes, though.
It's not that Apple doesn't have solutions to my problem, they just don't work very well. I used to get on with the checked songs feature in iTunes, but the software would regularly lose the checks. Given that those checks were effectively "my music library," this means that Apple would arbitrarily alter my library. After loading up iTunes enough times where my library suddenly all became checked, I had to find another solution.

Setting Music on my phone to only play downloaded music worked... until it didn't. Suddenly getting a gap between songs (while one was downloading) and then hearing a song that I took off my library 4 years ago was jarring enough and it happened frequently enough that I couldn't find an alternative player fast enough.

Apple doesn't understand just how central music is to my life. It used to, but I think they got so caught up in chasing the gold pot at the end subscription music rainbow that they let what made them so huge in the first place go straight into the shitter.

Overnight, they went from the only company that gave a damn, to the only company that didn't. And it happened right after Apple Music.

Get a Sonos?
I wound up buying a cheap AmazonBasics Bluetooth device to transmit music to my receiver. It works well enough. I suppose I could get on with Sonos, but I don't want to replace my current working system with all-new hardware.
Does Chromecast Audio do what you need?
https://forum.quartertothree.com/t/how-to-play-my-itunes-app...

I'd have to move my music off of my iPhone or maintain two music libraries. Neither are more acceptable than the status quo.