How to AirPlay music to your HomePod from Spotify, Pandora, Amazon Music, and Apple Music
The HomePod is not strictly limited to Apple Music playback through Siri -- it is also an AirPlay target, and can recieve an audio signal from nearly every app on your iPhone. Here are some of the most common apps, and where to tap to get that to play on your new speaker.
Given that we're using AirPlay to stream, this procedure works to send the music to any AirPlay device, like a bunch of stereo receivers, or Apple TVs. As a reminder, this is your iPhone "pushing" the music to the HomePod, rather than the HomePod "pulling" it itself from a source, so if you leave and take your iPhone with you, or force-quit the running music app, the tunes will stop.
Amazon Music
You might have forgotten about Pandora with the growth of other services. We did, and were pleasantly surprised to find that the service reminded us that there is a lot more music now than when we last signed up, so we took a minute to add favorite songs.
Given that we're using AirPlay to stream, this procedure works to send the music to any AirPlay device, like a bunch of stereo receivers, or Apple TVs. As a reminder, this is your iPhone "pushing" the music to the HomePod, rather than the HomePod "pulling" it itself from a source, so if you leave and take your iPhone with you, or force-quit the running music app, the tunes will stop.
Comments
That’s easy, in iTunes, just to the left of the album artwork and to the right of the controls at the top (full view or tap the volume button in the mini player), hit the airplay icon and send your music where you wish!
I’m not doubting this but is this stated somewhere? I ask because I really want this to be not true. Or maybe I’m not thinking it through.
I would very much like it to not be true, but unless they pull off something really amazing with Siri, HomeKit, and AirPlay 2, I'm not certain I see any other way to do it.
I had expected the HomePod's "+" and "-" to control its volume. But they don't. Pressing either of them decreases the volume on the whole system to about 5 or 10%.
Saying "Hey Siri - STOP" will pause the music. But "RESUME" doesn't un-pause it. Instead, it starts playing from the first track in my music library.
Note: I have Home Sharing and iCloud Match, but not Apple Music.