HomePod compatibility with Sonos system

Confirmation on The Loop today (quoting 9 to 5 Mac) that the HomePod will not play music that you have imported in to iTunes, so that CD collection I have of hundreds of albums would be useless on a HomePod. Think I prefer the agnostic approach of Sonos.

From the original 9to5mac.com article: "If you add music to your home iTunes library that was not acquired through a purchase, HomePod will not be able to access it. It appears HomePod doesn’t have Home Sharing, which would enable that kind of feature."

Thanks for the heads-up, @Airgetlam! Bloody heck; THAT's frustrating. Definitely a version 1.0 product....

So...Sonos doesn't play some old Apple music purchases (because no "PLUS" DRM-free version is available), and HomePod doesn't play anything that HASN'T been purchased through Apple music, unless one springs for an Apple Music subscription. Ugh.

[time passes...]

From another 9to5mac.com article, dated 23 Jan:

https://9to5mac.com/2018/01/23/homepod-airplay/

"""
The good news is HomePod appears to still support peer-to-peer AirPlay 1 just like other Apple products which means playback control from iOS apps that support original AirPlay (i.e. nearly every audio app including Spotify and YouTube).

That’s based on this mention of peer-to-peer AirPlay on HomePod’s tech specs page:

Peer-to-peer AirPlay requires a Mac (2012 or later) with OS X Yosemite or later, or an iOS device (late 2012 or later) with iOS 8 or later.

This means you should still be able to target HomePod as an AirPlay speaker from your iPhone or iPad. As a bonus, iTunes on the Mac supports multi-room audio playback with traditional AirPlay so if peer-to-peer AirPlay works, it’s possible you could use your Mac to host whole home music playback anyway — just without iOS control and the new user interface in Control Center.
"""

So...by "HomePod will not be able to access [non-purchased] music", it sounds like *Siri* won't know anything about it. You can still PLAY the non-purchased music, albeit manually.

From the original 9to5mac.com article: "If you add music to your home iTunes library that was not acquired through a purchase, HomePod will not be able to access it. It appears HomePod doesn’t have Home Sharing, which would enable that kind of feature."

Thanks for the heads-up, @Airgetlam! Bloody heck; THAT's frustrating. Definitely a version 1.0 product....

So...Sonos doesn't play some old Apple music purchases (because no "PLUS" DRM-free version is available), and HomePod doesn't play anything that HASN'T been purchased through Apple music, unless one springs for an Apple Music subscription. Ugh.


That is surprising; does this mean that CDs ripped via iTunes to the iTunes library will not be played? But I am sure that music purchased on iTunes and downloaded to the iTunes library will be played, so that will address the needs of most of the target market to play such music.

Plus there may be something that HomePod will do that Sonos cannot - play music downloaded within the Apple Music app for offline listening. To me, if that is the case, it makes HomePods arguably more useful than Sonos and certainly so for the times when there is no internet connection for whatever reason.

And all the above said, if the target market for HomePods is Apple Music subscribers, that market won't care about this issue.

The approach that Apple may be taking is to first build as seamless and as slick an integration of HomePods with other Apple devices and Apple services like iTunes and Apple Music as possible. In doing that the part of the market that does not subscribe to that approach will have issues that Apple may have decided to ignore at this time. The iPod story repeated.

But Homepod would send that offline music via Airplay 2 to the homepod. Exactly the same as you would send it to Sonos One.

Sure, Airplay 2 may well enable that, to the good of compatible Sonos and other system users; as it can be done today as well for any kit that has line in either via Airplay or via Bluetooth, so that won't be anything that is impossible today, just clunky to do. But overall the Apple thrust will likely be to first deliver the best experience to an all Apple environment, that is now a much large market than what Apple had at its command in 2000 when iPods were launched.

Other than for music surely this doesn't have much of a comparison to a Playbar as you can't hear your TV sound through it? You can only hear sound through movies/tv watch via an Apple TV?

That's my guess. And even with that, until Apple gets it working in a stereo pair config, I can't imagine it would be a good experience (as a Playbar) since it's a single, narrow, non-stereo box.

FWIW, Serenity Caldwell over at iMore has a review comparing the HomePod with the Sonos One (and a couple other also-rans). It's an interesting read. (She also notes the Sonos One bundle sale. So even if you're not an Apple fan, you've gotta like having competition. :))

https://www.imore.com/homepod-vs-amazon-echo-vs-google-home-max-vs-sonos-one-speaker-showdown#sonos

Interesting link, thank you. The HomePod certainly seem to be more than just another speaker with a smart interface. Interesting times ahead with more customer choice, which can only be good, if confusing.