Controlling HomePod from iPhone (without using airplay)

Hello!

Sorry if this has been asked before but many of the threads I found were over a year old and had been closed for discussion.

Im new to HomePod, finding the whose thing very frustrating as the 13.2.1 update seems to have caused a lot of bugs .. great!

so asking “hey Siri.. find x,y and z” is very problematic for me. All it will do is play all songs shuffled ... Which is really annoying however for the purposes of this next part, this is what I start off with.

It begins playing a random song from my iTunes Match library .. I then attempt to control the HomePod using the phone (via control panel) except when I attempt to do this .. it wants to switch to airplay (as below)

So basically, right now all I can do in this mode is change the volume, pause play and skip and adjust the order of songs that is in the up next .. I can’t access the library to select a playlist, artist or song.

doea anyone know is this a feature only for Apple music subscribers!? What a let down if so. I can’t believe they’d limit this sort of thing from people who want to play essentially their iTunes music on whatever playlist or order they want to

i mean it’s essentially like the remote feature for controlling the music on my computer, or the way that you can access your Library and add to up next in CarPlay mode.

So disappointed in Apple with this junk of a product! 🤦🏻‍♂️