Can homepod play bbc radio stations?

Further comment from Andrew Webb, BBC Worldwide VP Product Strategy:

'To expand on Matthew's comments, we do have the ambition to integrate with HomePod and allow our audience access to BBC services, but as yet, we know of no plans to allow third party applications to operate via the HomePod/Siri ecosystem. This is slowly opening up, if you are on the latest version of iOS and you ask Siri for the News, Sport News or Business News you now receive BBC News services. So, we do see a future evolving but we are not privy to their future intentions in this area. There are other considerations other than technical limitations. All BBC content available via 3rd party platforms must comply to the BBC's regulated distribution guidelines to ensure value to the license fee payer.

These are subject to commercial negotiation and often require work from both parties in order to be able to implement. So, the slightly longer answer is, not yet, we do have the ambition though, however there are technical hurdles that need to be crossed and commercial conditions that need to be satisfied.'

This suggests that Apple's support of third party services on HomePod is still very quiet, and the HomePod will have very limited services at launch. It's again encouraging that they are fully aware of the product and are working with Apple in order to implement something in the future, though. But when this occurs is Apple's guess alone.

I've purchased a HomePod, like, an hour ago and just got it home!

Really easy to set up, and found every music track we asked it to play, gave us the weather and all other stupid questions that you ask such things.

As regards radio, I was initially shocked to discover you can't say "Play Radio 1" or "Play Absolute Radio" etc and thought, b***er, what am I going to do now, as I listen to the radio *a lot* during the day. HOWEVER, it's simple to do, what you need to do is get the relevant app on your iPhone, then select AirPlay and choose the HomePod. Takes seconds to do and once it's playing, it's no different to if you'd asked Alexa to play the station only the sound quality is PHENOMENAL.

Hi, to play the BBC radio stations you'll need to use a third party app with AirPlay. The HomePod alone will only play the Apple Music station: Beats 1. "Radio AIR" is an app with over 30,000 radio stations including BBC ones : Radio AIR on the App Store . Maxime

Moz70 wrote:

However, this stops the music if I need to use the phone. Would be much better if you could just play the radio stations direct. As you say Amazon Dot does it seemlessly.

Then maybe you should consider the Sonos speaker with Alexa instead. It sounds as if it might better meet your needs.

You can also submit feedback to Apple here:

http://www.apple.com/feedback

JarScott wrote:

I can't see any logical reason for this lack of functionality, apart from possibly an oversight on Apple's part.

You should submit feedback to Apple letting them know you'd like to see that feature. I have.

Product Feedback - Apple

Apple are being decidedly quiet about this, but I think it's because they know HomePod won't support any 3rd party radio stations at launch. You'll be able to call up Beats 1 and that's it. Which technically puts it way behind competition in terms of services. I'm hoping the BBC and Apple will work together to bring the stations to HomePod, but that may not be for some time. Until then, we'll have to deal with the inconvenience of using an app on your iPhone or Mac to fetch the station and then AirPlay it to the HomePod - nowhere near as convenient as 'Hey Siri, play BBC Radio 1'. I reached out to the BBC for comment on this but they chose not to respond, which either means they have nothing to say or they're working on something - considering BBC iPlayer is available on most of Apple's other devices (including Apple TV).

I have a HomePod on order, but the fact it only plays stuff from Apple Music is concerning and is making me question whether I should click that 'Cancel' button until the services are up to scratch. But I have no doubt HomePod sounds amazing, as all reviews have suggested. It sounds like HomePod could benefit from an App Store of its own (similar to Amazon Echo's Skills store), but we all know how long it took Apple TV to get its own App Store!

It's also curious there is no HomePod section on any of the Apple support pages, or indeed on this forum.

I'd echo JarScott's thoughtful post. I haven't contacted the BBC on this, but following reading the below article, I was tempted to email their head of tech. The article is about the Amazon Echo, but gives hope to me that Apple would be missing a trick to not do the same, but also be inconsistent given their support on other Apple platforms. For me CarPlay is the closest equivalent - and arguably much more niche than Apple TV - and that now has a BBC app, which is a great asset if you like downloading programmes.

So I would expect HomePod to have BBC, TuneIn (both on CarPlay) apps in due course.

http://www.cityam.com/277306/bbc-brings-radio-and-podcasts-amazon-echo-alexa-voi ce-skill

And I am totally with you on the ability to ask Siri to play BBC R4 or download Annie Mac's dance show without having to go through the iPhone. If you are replacing a kitchen radio, you need a one-step way to get your station playing, or it's just too much hassle (or at very least, a step backward).

A response from Matthew Postgate, BBC Chief of Technology and Product Officer:

'I think the short summary is that we have the ambition to integrate with HomePod but no current plans. We always try to maximise the ways in which our audiences can reach our services but currently HomePod does not provide for the correct integration. It is something we have been talking to Apple about but have no confirmed timescales.'

Thanks for emailing him and posting. I think the issue is Siri. I'm sure the app could port across given HomePod runs an iteration of iOS, but needs more solid Siri integration to use it. Siri actually does more on my iPhone for iPlayer/Radio iPlayer than I thought. Not sure if Siri does anything in CarPlayer to open the app, or play stations or downloads. Probably same as the iPhone.

Just saw another article on the release of CarPlay BBC app - head of iPlayer is Dan Taylor-Watt. Doubt he will be able to add more colour though!

Thanks

Yeah. From what Postgate said, I get the impression that the only reason their services aren't available for HomePod yet is because Apple haven't really provided any kind of platform for them to run on. There's no App Store for HomePod, no 'Skills' store: it doesn't have access to third party applications. There's no where for the BBC to put their services on HomePod. We can forgive Apple in that they explicitly mentioned they'd be putting music ahead of Siri services at launch, and Tim Cook has said Siri's features on HomePod would improve over time, but radio is a fundamental part of the music experience for many people so it would be a shame if these kinds of services were not supported soon.

It's encouraging to learn that there is an open dialogue between the BBC and Apple, as this suggests Apple are also in talks with other service providers.

Agreed, but I suspect that the absence of the platform/store/skills is that Siri isn't up to running/controlling them yet, which it would have to do as that is the only interface. Siri has some limited integration with apple apps on the iPhone, but otherwise just seems to open 3rd party apps with no functionality. Needs more work to even do something simple like - 'Hey Siri play BBC R6 Music/Radio 2' - which I will need if it is to replace my kitchen/study radio where I can just push the on switch! Agree that it's good they are talking to the BBC and other 3rd parties though.

Thanks for posting. Great that they are open to discussing. Appreciate the whole other layer of scrutiny the BBC operates under due to licence fee. They'll figure it out! So HomePod for the study with the tech nerd and keep the radio in the kitchen for now.

Wow, thanks for all the research on this guys. Not being able to play BBC radio is a deal breaker for me; HomePod order cancelled! Will pick one up when they integrate an API for this sort of thing. I'm genuinely suprised at how far behind Apple is with regard to third party integration.

Telegraph review is up, though unclear if this is in the same highly controlled circumstances as all the 'previews'. Amusingly they make a number of mentions regarding the lack of radio that the posters here can no doubt relate to...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2018/02/06/apple-homepod-review-siris-smar t-speaker-speaker-smart/