Cannot play my 'Playlists' on HomePod Minis

Siri on HomePod should be able to play from your unhidden purchase history, unless you have a subscription to either iTunes Match or Apple Music when it should be able to play from your iCloud Music Library. In other words a subscription is required to call up playlists using Siri. Note iTunes Match users may find they cannot use the recognize my voice feature and still have Siri access their library.

tt2

I’m having a similar problem. I make sure to make requests “from my library” and some things she can find, some things she can’t.

A workaround I’ve found is to create a shortcut. For some reason when you make the shortcut on your phone (which is totally unnecessary on the phone, since it’s not really faster than opening the app) it gives Siri a path to find what you’re looking for. Every time I ask for an album or playlist and she can’t find it I make a shortcut for it and then she can do it from the HomePod. It’s annoying to have the extra shortcuts but you don’t need to actually use the shortcut from your phone - it just has to exist. I think it might also only work for music purchased through iTunes, but I haven’t checked that specifically yet.

When you refer to your music library, what do you mean? If you don't subscribe to Apple Music then you probably use a computer to manage music such as ripped CDs. In this case Siri won't be aware of your music library and so cannot find and play your playlists.

As Elle.93 explains you will need to use Airplay from a Mac, iPhone or iPad to reliably play playlists from that library (in my case an iTunes library on a Mac). The shortcut workaround on an iPhone (or iPad) seems to be the only way to have Homepod Siri be aware of your playlists.

I have tried getting Homepod Siri to play music from a Mac that is Homesharing to an Apple TV that uses stereo Homepods as audio output but that doesn't work. Siri is only aware of the playlists in the ATV Music app. Those playlists are mostly associated with an Apple Music subscription, as far as I can tell, although some playlists from my iPhone are included.

There are still problems with Siri’s ability to find iTunes purchased music. For example, I bought the Moana soundtrack through iTunes and Siri just cannot find it, no matter how many different ways I try to ask (I’ve tried asking for Moana soundtrack, Moana original motion picture soundtrack, etc). I even put it on and then tried to ask her how to ask for it. A few weeks ago I bought the soundtrack for Six: the Musical and a Pokémon album for my son, and she can find both of those just fine. I bought all 3 from the same device - I don’t know what the problem is. So I have to use a shortcut to listen to Moana but not the other two. At some point I want to test with some of the music I’ve uploaded from physical CDs to see if the shortcut will enable that but at the moment I don’t know, because I don’t have any of it stored on my phone due to lack of space.

It might be a DRM issue; the song files are encoded by the originals. You can still AirPlay from your phone to HomePods

You're welcome. 🙂

At least you now know that without a subscription you need to use AirPlay to play your playlists on your HomePod.

tt2