Disable Apple Music play / pause button Monterey 2021 Macbook Pro M1 Pro M1 Max

I'm happy apple brought back the physical F1-F12 buttons. The problem is Apple Music. Even if Spotify, brave, or another media player is open, sometimes the Play/Pause button will open apple music instead of playing and pausing. This is extremely annoying and a BetterTouchTool can remove this function, but then you lose play/pause capabilities across applications.

If this is a "professional laptop" there should be a way to disable the auto launch application while retaining play/pause functionality. Or at least, replace the auto boot of Apple Music with Spotify, and app that sees far more use for me.

I've seen old stack exchange posts about this, but the answers are messy.