HomePod won't play iTunes Match songs by name

All I can do is reiterate that iTunes Match works fine for me.

There are two key settings in the Home app.

1. Tap on the House icon in the top left hand corner (not on the HomePod control button itself), then tap on your name in the following screen. Turn off Recognize my Voice. If there is more than one name on that page then turn off Recognize my Voice in all of them.
2. Return to the Home screen where you can long press on the HomePod control button. This will produce another screen with a gear wheel in the bottom right corner. Tap on the gear. Another screen opens and in that one you will find the email address relating to your iTunes Match account. MAKE SURE THIS IS CORRECT. In the past this has been incorrect for me. My iTunes Match account is different to my iCloud account and I have found my iCloud account used in there, especially after resetting the HomePod.

Once you have finished then GIVE THE HOMEPOD TIME to propagate with your iTunes Match account. It doesn’t happen immediately.

Also, when using SIRI, how you phrase the command helps. For example, “Hey Siri, play Relax playlist” may not work sometimes but “Hey Siri, play a playlist” “Which playlist would you like?” “Relax”, seems to work.

I’m sorry if this doesn’t help but, like you, I’ve tried many different ways to overcome this in the past. This post is based on my own tribulations with the device. I’m not interested in using it as a personal assistant, I just want to play my music. My HomePod is a brilliantly sounding speaker which Is let down by an unintuitive interface through the Home app. If it had its own app, I’m sure it would be easier to manage.

I have found that this only works with Recognise my Voice turned off. This setting is found in the Home app. Tap the little house logo and then tap on your name in the People section. Turn off Recognise my Voice.

You lose the ability to personalise the HomePod via Siri when asking for your Calendar events etc. but I’d rather be in control of my music. My wife can also control the music too as it uses our Family shared iTunes Match subscription.

Old Chap wrote:

I have found that this only works with Recognise my Voice turned off. This setting is found in the Home app. Tap the little house logo and then tap on your name in the People section. Turn off Recognise my Voice.

You lose the ability to personalise the HomePod via Siri when asking for your Calendar events etc. but I’d rather be in control of my music. My wife can also control the music too as it uses our Family shared iTunes Match subscription.

Thank you for posting this! This is exactly what the problem was for me!

My wife and I each have our own personal iCloud accounts, but we have a third shared iCloud account that we use for all purchases as well as iTunes Match. When Recognize My Voice is enabled, our HomePods cannot access the music & playlists in our shared iCloud account - even though both HomePods are configured to use our shared iCloud account for Media!

Turning off Recognize My Voice immediately fixes the issue!

I had this same issue for quite a while. Now however I am unable to play any song. HomePod can’t find anything in my library it would seem, yet, if I say “Hey Siri Play“ it will play all songs shuffled, so it clearly CAN see the library but just can’t pick out a song/album/artist anymore.

I have tried so many things and still can’t fix.

Nope. I work in IT so I can assure you I have tried absolutely everything. This, in my case, is very clearly a bug that Apple have to fix.

The fact that it works perfectly during the “configuring” stage when you add the HomePod to home as a new device tells me that this is a backend issue.

As soon as it finishes the configuring stage it stops working and tells me x song doesn’t exist in my library when in fact it does.

Also, this issue is only present on the HomePod, iTunes Match works perfectly on all other devices, including iPad, iPhone and Mac. If I use Siri on them they work as they should finding everything in the library.

Honestly, the HomePod is a buggy mess and Apple need to give it some much needed attention.

Yes, tried changing personal requests for one and both HomePods, tried signing in and out of account as default account, have literally tried everything. As mentioned, it works for a minute or two during initial "configuring" stage during setup.

I've wiped them and started again more times that I can remember, with different combinations of options, settings, testing this with that, etc. As I said, I come from an IT background and essentially do this sort of thing for a living.

Definitely a bug that only Apple can fix either in a software update or change in the backend for my specific account, or more globally on their servers. This does impact quite a few people it would seem.

Of note, I've even wiped my entire library and started from scratch. Issue persists.

Strange. Disabling Recognize My Voice on both of mine is what finally did the trick for me.

I suspect the reason the Recognize My Voice setting was preventing things from working correctly for me is because while my wife and I have our own normal iCloud accounts, we use a third shared iCloud account for app and music purchases (and subsequently iTunes Match). When the Recognize My Voice setting is enabled, apparently the HomePod looks for music in our normal iCloud accounts rather than the shared one - even though we had Home app > HomePod Settings > Default Account set to the shared account! When it's disabled, it finds our music in the shared (default) account.

Sorry to hear it didn't work for you.

Yeah, I did. Going to have to open a support ticket and spend hours slowly climbing the support chain to get to someone who can actually help unfortunately.

Thank you for the suggestions.

Apple Support, if you're reading this feel free to reach out to me, happy to dedicate some time to troubleshoot this issue with one of your engineers. It'll help not just myself but many others too I would think.

Yes, this is exactly what I'm getting. Everything is in the library, and can be played from other devices using Siri, but when the HomePod is asked to play the exact same song using the exact same phrase used elsewhere it says it can't find it. It works for a few mins after initial setup then stops working, never to come back.

Apple need to fix this, it's been broken for far too long.

Here to confirm this as well. Noticed it when I'd asked to play a particular genre that it would only play the one album I bought through the iTunes Store, not any of the ones I had purchased elsewhere and added to iTunes. Thought it was an issue with my iCloud library because I had previously had an issue where Siri would erroneously play Santana as "Jazz" music, and I had to fix that in iTunes on my Mac. The only way around this is to turn off "Recognize my Voice" entirely, which means I lose my Siri Shortcuts and Reminders functionality. I didn't have this problem previously with the HomePod, and I'm not sure when I crept into my HomePod. I'm sent a complaint through the Product Feedback page, and I've reset the HomePod 2 or 3 times now to try and fix it, so hopefully Apple fixes this soon.

UPDATE: As of 18th August 2020 Apple has finally made a change on their backend servers that has now FIXED THIS ISSUE.

No updates required to your HomePod. You can also turn on personal requests once again.

Works irrespective of HomePod software version, both 13.4.8 and 14.0 beta work fine.

I can confirm this as well, though I still have some weirdness where if I ask it to play a certain artist it will play the wrong songs, but I can request those albums and songs specifically and they play. Also some genre weirdness, like not all songs in a genre playing when I ask for that genre. This could be from some troubleshooting I had tried to do with my iCloud Library beforehand.

Hello,

This is a known problem. I ask that you please submit a bug report, using the following link, so Apple can address it in a future system update.

Apple Product Feedback

Badger Apple via Feedback - HomePod - Apple.

tt2