Considering a HomePod Purchase

[pumasalad]

We have 6 HomePods in our loft-style house. there are few walls, so we can hear the bedroom pair in the livingroom and the kitchen and the office, but we couldn’t issue commands very well, so we ended up buying all 6 and spreading them out. We have a stereo pair upstairs in the loft, a stereo pair in the living room, a single one in the kitchen and a single one in the office.

We started with only a Music Match subscription and it was good. Except there are a handful of commands that are advertised as features that it can’t do with music match. things like “play songs from 1980”. or “play [insert your favorite genre here] music” or basically anything that requires AI. What it could do is play playlists that I had set up or individual albums and songs when I was very specific with my wording. “Play my playlist Driving” would work, “Play Driving Playlist” might work sometimes, “Play playlist I’m Driving” would never work.

We finally gave up and purchased an Apple Music subscription and it was like opening the flood gates. We still have the issues of having to say the specific playlist name to listen to the playlist, but in all honesty, I almost never play my own playlists any more. “Play French Pop Music”, “Play Songs from 1974”, even just “Play some music” works better than it used to. And when it’s playing just some random music, it mixes in my music match collection with stuff I would never have thought to purchase, so that’s nice.

It still has some limitations. tell your phone to “play The Album by Abba” and it does. Tell the HomePod to “play The Album by Abba” and it plays the album titled “Abba” by abba. You have to say “Play the album The Album by Abba” to the HomePod if you really want to listen to the album they called “The Album”. …that’s just one quirk of the Siri on HomePod. There are many more. We jokingly call Siri on HomePod “Siri 0.75” because it mostly works.

We often just use our iPhones or iPads so we can control the HomePods visually instead of calling out to Siri or having to repeat ourselves occasionally (or having to rely on our memories!). That also allows us to see the album art on our device! It’s a convoluted thing to do, I wish apple would either release an app for controlling the HomePod, or put it as an easy-to-find-setting-that-would-stay-set on my devices so I don’t have to re-connect to them every time I use them. If I am controlling the HomePod(s) from my Mac, it loses the connection every single time the screen saver comes on and I have to go re-connect them. Not a huge deal, because the HomePod keeps playing (and it’s easy enough to do even though it can take a whole minute or two out of my workflow), but the album covers that were displaying so nicely on my Mac screen stop displaying and I have to reconnect to the HomePod to make them show up again.

So I’ve rambled a bit. We also have a massive HomeKit based home set up with blinds and lights and locks and thermostats and the like. All in all, Siri on the HomePod really does need to catch up to Siri on the iPad or iPhone, but it’s still a pretty good thing. And it will work with Music Match, but it will work so much better with AppleMusic.

I have a Music Match subscription still. I maintain both that and AppleMusic for the family. The songs I have in MusicMatch and my playlists sync only to my account. When the husband tells the HomePod Siri to play music, it will not play any of the songs that I have in Music Match unless they also are available in Apple Music. If I tell it to play music, it will include all of my Music Match songs in the normal mix. As I was a DJ in my younger days, I have a ton of special mixes and songs that were one-offs that just aren’t available in Apple Music and the only way to hear them is for me to issue the command to HomePod.

I hope this answers your questions (and a few you may not have asked :).

[pumasalad]

@Shamino

For instance, could I use one of these commands:

• Shuffle all songs with the genre “New age”
• Shuffle all songs with BPM under 120
• Shuffle all my 90’s songs (everything with year from 1990-1999)
• Shuffle everything not played in the last 90 days

(5 minutes later…)

I just tried these on my iPod Touch. It was able to handle the first command. It didn’t understand or claims to need an app for the others, even though all the data required is in my music’s metadata.

Since Siri is primarily a cloud-based service, I assume the same would happen with a HomePod

Siri is NOT the same on the HomePod as it is on the iPhone or iPad. You would assume that it would be but it’s just not. there are many limitations on the HomePod that are annoying.

for your 4 shuffle commands, the one by Genre won’t work with Music Match but will work with Apple Music, the one with BPM doesn’t work at all and says I’ll need to download an app for that on my iPhone, the one about the 90’s songs may have to be phrased differently to work in Apple Music but it still will not work with Music Match, and I’ve never been able to get it to play things that I haven’t recently listened to so good luck with that one (I hope there’s a work around somehow to make this work!)

I have been on Apple Music for almost 2 years, so my experience with what didn’t work in Music Match vs. what does work in Apple Music may have evolved, but I wouldn’t count on it.

[silvermn (Sam Silverman)]

So I got the Homepod (2 days!) And it came out of the box, plugged in, and set up in 5 minutes.

I’ve got it at the new home (where I’m not living yet) so I haven’t had lot’s of time to work with it, but here’s what I’ve found:

-It sounds very good.

• Siri works well. Except…
• “Siri, play “I know you rider” by Janis Joplin.”
  -“I can’t find that song in your collection.”
• I’m looking at that song in iTunes. So I start playing it and then go to Airplay and select HomePod. It starts playing on the HomePod. Perfectly. I’m going to need to sit down and spend some time with this and try to figure it out. Siri/Homepod finds some songs and doesn’t find others. I thought it might be things I hadn’t downloaded to my phone, but that’s not the case.I need to bring my Mac over to the new home and try that. For the moment, all is well. Workarounds work. We’ll figure it out. And it sounds great.

Thanks to everyone for their help and advice!

Sam

[tommy (Tommy Weir)]

That’s perhaps because the song is by her band - Big Brother and the Holding Company. Try that maybe?

[silvermn (Sam Silverman)]

Nah, that’s not it. it does the same thing with other groups/singers/bands.

I’ll figure it out - eventually.

Or I won’t…

But I’ll have a workaround

Sam

[jsrnephdoc]

@ace

But for Apple Music, they’re fine, and for the most part, they just work. That said, I find it quite difficult to know how to talk to Siri when it comes to music

For classical music lovers, the Siri interfacing is a vexing, indeed downright NASTY companion. Reading this thread reminded me that my wife (whose taste runs to Bach and Vivaldi) is currently sitting in her car somewhere in an endless line waiting for a community “snapshot” COVID test, so I’ll likely have a few undisturbed HOURS alone with my iMac (cleaning up old software debris and refreshing backups), and that’s long enough to listen to one of Gustav Mahler’s epic symphonies. That led to a shouting match with Siri, during which (I’m not kidding) “she” pouted in German and refused to respond to ANY more commands until I walked up to “her” and stroked her glowing bald “head.” Then, after MANY false starts, I managed to convince “her” that “Play Mahler’s second symphony” didn’t mean “Play [some unknown German guy] discussing the second movement of Mahler’s sixth symphony” or “play the second movement of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony” or other wrong answers. Finally, when I said “Play Gustav Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony” I thought at first that we’d made up, but all she actually granted me was the very first 10 minutes of a 90 minute work.

Of course, it’s no better on my iPhone, where even in my own downloaded "Music’ library I have duplicated movements, movements from other works (even other composers) interspersed among those of a work I want to listen too, etc.

Does hope for organizing this mess lie in a “Take Control” book, or in some help manual somewhere else?

[ace (Adam Engst)]

@silvermn

Nah, that’s not it. it does the same thing with other groups/singers/bands.

Sometimes you can get better results with Siri by rephrasing your question or adding words. Such as:

• “Play the song “I know you rider” by Janis Joplin.”
• “Play Janis Joplin’s song “I know you rider.””

I find that I need to do that more with albums, since there can be conflicts between song and album names.

(In this case, I suspect those won’t work either, since, as @tommy says, the artist listed in Apple Music is the band, not Joplin.)

@jsrnephdoc

Does hope for organizing this mess lie in a “Take Control” book, or in some help manual somewhere else?

Kirk McElhearn would be the guy to do it, and if he hasn’t already, I suspect it’s not something that’s fixable at the moment.

[Shamino (David C.)]

@ace

In this case, I suspect those won’t work either, since, as @tommy says, the artist listed in Apple Music is the band, not Joplin.

That’s an interesting question. Does Siri select songs based on the metadata on the tracks in your library or does it always use the Apple Music database?

If you don’t subscribe to Apple Music (as I don’t), that would really cripple its functionality. Especially if you have unusual music or if you’ve created metadata that doesn’t match Apple’s.

[pumasalad]

hahaha. I have to say “play the album The Album by Abba”, to get it to play Abba’s 4th studio album. It took about a month to figure out how to phrase that to get the HomePods to play it.

[pumasalad]

Also, just this second, i said “Hey Siri” and read out loud “Play the song “I know you rider” by Janis Joplin” from Adam’s post above. and Siri replied "now playing ‘I know you rider’ by ‘Big Brother and the Holding Company’. and started playing the song. So it works for me here. It’s likely that I have never listened to that song on my account here until now, if that makes any difference.

I have also noticed a lot of times that Siri commands that don’t work on one HomePod work fine on another, and espcially work fine when I say exactly the same phrase on my iPhone or iPad.