[danso]

I already have and am satisfied with Alexa, but HomePod interests me because of Apple's general stance towards privacy. Has there been extensive discussion on how Apple plans to differentiate Siri's data usage/sharing vs Google and Amazon?

But honestly, the main obstacle for me is Apple's lack of 3rd-party integration. For example, it appears that Siri can't be used to access Spotify. With Alexa, I can scope music requests with "Alexa, play some jazz from Spotify (as opposed to Amazon Music)". I can even configure Alexa to use Spotify by default -- e.g. prioritized over Amazon's own offerings.

I've a pretty large iTunes library from back in the day but I've completely stopped buying from iTunes (and haven't bothered to check out Music) because of lack of interoperability.

[nkristoffersen]

Wouldn't the "sirikit" availability start to solve the problem of 3rd party integration?

[firloop]

SiriKit has specifically scoped "intent domains" for acceptable usage and music controls aren't one.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/sirikit#2863953

[BatFastard]

I love having Spotify hooked into my Alexa. I have totally abandoned my iTune lib.

[gcr]

Totally agreed that preferring one form of service over another is a form of lock-in.

However, in favor of a certain music service:

- with iCloud Music Library, you can play all of your mp3 files on any device, Spotify-style;

- if you purchase an album from iTunes, you own it forever; this is not true of Spotify-streamable music. I've had some of my favorite albums disappear from Spotify, for example.

Long-term, iTunes, Apple Music, and iCloud Music Library seem like a better solution because they allow you to retain actual ownership/control of your own music collection, which helps a lot.