[dont__panic]

Play/pause always starts the Music app, regardless of your preferred music player. It's annoying for those of us who don't use the built-in Music app at all.

Your command doesn't work. The music app actually lives at `/System/Applications/Music.app`. And since Monterey, I think, even sudo won't let you modify data in that folder because of macOS's built-in protections that cannot be disabled:

  chmod: Unable to change file mode on /System/Applications/Music.app: Read-only file system

Even disabling SIP and booting into safe mode doesn't let you do this.

[Neff]

If you haven't seen it yet, NoTunes[1] does a great job of fixing the hijacking of the play button or when bluetooth headphones are connected or disconnected.

1: https://github.com/tombonez/noTunes

[deafpolygon]

I think the complaint is that it shouldn't hijack the button in the first place.