Exactly -- the Amazon and Sonos products seem unable to natively access your iCloud Music Library or Apple Music subscriptions, and can only act as an endpoint receiver of audio. That is the status quo and is no big deal. But now for the HomePod, if it can't access Spotify natively, that is somehow a Really Big Deal (tm) despite being the exact same sort limitation everyone has accepted on the Sonos and Alexa products.
I think this illustrates the hypocrisy of those grading Apple on a curve.
Apple Music and iCloud Music are the ONLY music services that Sonos doesn't play natively, requiring you to stream those from iOS. All other services (~65) are handled directly by each Sonos device. So, not fair to imply this puts Sonos on the same compatibility level of HomePod. It seems to me the restriction is by Apple, not Sonos. For those who use non-Apple music services, no system comes close to Sonos for compatibility. It would be nice if Apple was the same way with HomePod, but at this point, I think Apple is only concerned with appealing to Apple Music customers, which is not a bad approach since they have more of those than they do HomePod owners. I was on the fence about doing my 8-location multi-room setup with HomePods (which sound great), but the price is just a little too high for that. If Apple had a lower cost speaker closer to Sonos One, I would have mixed and matched the two types across the house and bought an Apple Music subscription. Instead, I went with Sonos and bought Amazon Music, which works well over Sonos and all of our Echos.
I don’t experience any difference playing Apple Music tracks and other streaming services. The device that initiates playback can shut down or leave the premises and the music happily keeps playing. As far as I can tell, all services are equally “native”
what makes Apple Music not native?
I actually don't have Apple Music so I haven't tried it, but what I read indicated you must initiate from an iOS device. When I select Apple Music from the Mac App, it tells me I must use an iPhone or iPad to set up the service. That is different than all other services, which can be initiated from any mobile device, PC or Mac, or by asking Alexa or pressing Play/Pause on a device. I didn't realize that you could leave the premises with the initiating iOS device and continue to play. That means it is not using the iOS device to stream, which is good. Still, it is different and a little more restrictive than the other services. Perhaps initiation from iOS is required per Apple's agreements with the labels, or it is something to do with licensing issues that iTunes for iOS is best able to handle.
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