Homepod pausing music

Hey gang...yes, Lydia (my Apple Senior Advisor) has escalated my three-HomePod Pausing and Stopping case to engineering, too.

Yesterday I did a test and used AirPlay to stream our Amazon Music "smooth jazz" station to one HomePod using my iPad. NO PROBLEM! It has not paused, stopped or done anything but smooth sailing! Played straight for at least six hours until I stopped it at 3 am (we play music in background here at the house for a minimum of 12 to 14 hours per day as we live and work out of the house).

I am wondering now if the problem doesn't have anything to do with AirPlay but lies with Apple's music servers sending signal directly to the HomePods? WE can't even play one of our playlists without it pausing or worse: the song will stop in the middle of the tune and/or after every single song!

We spent over a thousand dollars for these three HomePods and they worked great the first two or three weeks. We took off for a week to our cottage and came back to all this mess! Never thought I would be so disappointed with Apple and a product from them. Don't know what to do if they can't fix this and I can't get my money back?

Everyone: keep contacting an Apple Advisor and send them here to our forum...strength-in-numbers!

Have a great weekend everyone!

UPDATE:

Interesting development:

I tried streaming Amazon Music using AirPlay from my iMac instead of my iPad to one HomePod and it played for about an hour before it just now stopped playing.

I checked my iMac browser and it shows that Amazon Music is still playing, it has not stopped or paused. The sound, though is not coming out as it is being streamed to the HomePod.

So, it appears, the HomePod itself is shutting things down as far as stopping music and pausing the music! Strange and serious.

~William

Hi everyone,

sounds like that are a lot of us with this 'pausing' type issue when using Airplay.

Well I have a small update, I spoke at length with a Senior Advisor at Apple yesterday , now before i go on I use the latest version of Mac OS Beta, however I don't think for one minute using the Beta version has anything to do with the issue we all seem to be having. Anyway, the Advisor ( John is his name ) has told me to make a small partition on my Mac Mini and install a fresh OS ( I will do this tonight UK time ), transfer some music to iTunes and then see what happens.

John is calling me back on Tuesday.

I will update this thread afterwards , so lets see what happens. I did tell him that there was a lot of others ( you guys and others ) who are having the same problem.

Keep fingers crossed for some sort of development !!

Steve

Hi Steve..wow, that seems like more than a bit of overkill on the part of the advisor to have you do all that!

Anyway, the problem is not isolated to just AirPlay streaming as when calling out an Apple Radio staion or a playlist in your account directly to the HomePod to down load and stream the problem still occurs.

Good luck, though...let us know how it turns out. Thanks for your input. ~William

That’s an interesting suggestion from the apple advisor. When I took my HomePod to the local apple store, the genius gave me a similar suggestion to my iPhone, i.e. reset my iPhone and set it up as a new device instead of restoring from backup, because he thought it was an issue with my iPhone rather than the HomePod. I did all that but unfortunately the problem persisted. So I’m convinced the issue is indeed with the HomePod. But I’m keen to find out whether this works out for you.

I have not experienced this issue myself yet.

But just a thought could it be there is another device that has speaker enabled to airplay that at one point in time was being used to stream to homepod, but now music stopped, but use homepod as a speaker is still enabled or ticked as in use.

Then from another device, again with speaker enabled via airplay, or from homepod direct, music is playing on homepod and original device, that is still has use speaker via airplay, is randomly sending out a signal to homepod interrupting, pausing what is playing?

Be interesting to know if who ever is experiencing this checks all devices to see if airplay, use speaker to homepod, is still ticked, unticks it and see if there still having the issue of Homepod pausing music. Quick way to disconnect all devices would be to enable airplay password on Homepod via HomeApp, or change airplay password.

Hi, iboy,

I am really exasperated today. The “engineers” got back to my senior advisor with the diagnosis that there is something wrong with my iPhone’s configuration and she walked me through the interminable process of erasing the **** thing and setting it up as a new device. She didn’t tell me that I would have to re-download ALL of my playlists when I was done. Anyway, as I predicted, it didn’t work. I don’t know why they insist that everybody’s situation is different and so they can’t see a trend in everyone having difficulty with the HomePod, even with different set ups, bandwidths, etc. I finally told her I was done for the day and didn’t want to spend anymore time on it. This cost me almost an entire afternoon.

Bruce

Hey Bruce...wow...I feel your pain man. Not cool. Passing the buck.

My wife and I have such buyer's remorse now as we spent over a grand for three HomePods that basically are expensive "paperweights!"

And the fact, so I have been told, that we cannot return them for our money back as it is over one month (gosh, the problem didn't start rearing its ugly head until the one month period!) is a salt mine in the wound!

I wrote Nick, the editor of Mac Life magazine and he wrote back saying he is experiencing similar problems pausing and stopping but thought is was just a Wi-Fi glitch...I directed Nick to our community thread and he thanked me and is going to have the magazine look into this.

Does anyone know how to put together a class action lawsuit? I never thought I would ever say anything bad about an Apple product in my lifetime (I go way back to my college Mac SE with 20MB of RAM!) but this HomePod is terrible and useless...does sound great when it works, though. But, it doesn't work.

I am kicking myself as I just learned of the Songs One for $199...it is compatible with everything and soon later this year with AirPlay 2! I could have bought five Songs One's to fill more rooms in my house than the three HomePods I'm stuck with!

William

Thanks, William. I’m also a long time Apple booster, and an owner of a lot of Apple products. At least my HomePod Works well with Siri, but I understand that you can’t run three HomePods at once from Siri.

Bru

Hi Bruce, understood.

If if you are referring to multi-room syncing, yes that will not work with Siri or AirPlay. This feature might work (and I say that sarcasticall) with AirPlay 2.

I can engage Siri commands on each HomePod individually and have it play...and eventually pause or stop.

I can also stream from one of our iPad’s to a single HomePod where it too will play for a random time period and then pause or stop completel. All beyond frustrating and aggravating and the polar opposite of why we wanted the HomePod to begin with. We live and work out of our home and play smooth jazz in the background for a minimum of 12 to 14 hours per day (ha, and night) so the HomePods have been a complete failure so far. ~W

No comfort, but the other day I had my HomePod running for well over 8 hours on a single playlist called up using Siri. I've also had AirPlay working with computer, Apple TV and HomePod all playing together quite nicely.

I haven't checked back over the thread, but a standard Apple Music subscription only allows one stream. Could it be that your Siri requests are interfering with each other or do you have a family sub?

tt2

Maybe I should try a longer trial with Siri, if you’re saying that the problem persists when you’re just using Siri. I’ve had it running successfully for more than an hour with Siri, but maybe I should try longer tests. I’d really like to use AirPlay, but…

Hi tt2...interesting, but that should not effect the Pods I don’t think as each pod is mine, registered to me and my account and I can play my music on my computer, my wife’s computer two iPads, iPhones, iPod etc.

But who knows, maybe there is something there. So I guess I have to pay more to stream to my devices?

Hi all you HomePoders 😉,

well as promised here's my report after having a long chat with Apple.

1) Installed a Partitioned new OS ( 10.13.4 ) on my Mac Mini as asked to do ( I'm a Beta tester so told to do a Partition and install the public version, won't go into much detail here but still .....

2) Added some Music to the 'Test OS' as I call it, and guess what, still get the same issues 😮 Why am I not surprised .

3) Did some tests. a) when I play music which I have purchased through iTunes and use Siri commend to play ( Not via iTunes on my Mac, just told Siri to play some music ), not one problem, no pausing zero , happy days you would think ......... wrong

b) I then 'downloaded' into my iTunes on Test OS ( the one's I purchased through iTunes ), guess what , the music pauses , what !!!!! Most strange. This tells me that its all to do with Airplay .

4) I then did a little test by playing some music and if a track did the little 'pause' I wrote the time down when it happened ( as in, track playing, say, 2 minutes 20 seconds into the track it pauses I would write this down ).

Anyway I play 3 tracks from the same album, first 2 both did the 'pause' on me, strangely the 3rd did not.

So I did the same process again ( taking note from the first time when tracks 'paused', guess what it all random.

The third track this time did pause, so did the other 2 but all at different times compared to the first time ( test ).

5) I reported this all to John ( Apple tech' guy ), he has now escalated my issues to someone above in the engineering department ( what ever that is ). I did also mention that there loads of us who are having the similar issues with their HD's He seem to be a little surprised when i told him that ?

6) It would be helpful if 'we' all stated where we are in the world, makes life a little easier when asked a question , ie; what type of router do I have , well i live in the UK and I have a BT Hub 6, if that helps anyone.

7) I will report back if and when i hear from Apple again .......

Lets just keep our fingers crossed that perhaps one day Apple just might get this fixed

All the best to all of you.

Steve ( UK ) Yep I live in the UK 😉 Who would have thought ...

Hi Steve,

Was the content that you were playing stored locally or in the cloud? Is your Mac mini on a wired or wireless connection? I can see a worst case scenario where your Mac is fetching data from your wireless router only to have to send it back so it can send it on to the HomePod. Three times as much Wi-Fi traffic as direct playback on the HomePod. If Wi-Fi is congested where you are that might just be the difference between flawless playback with no issues and intermittent buffer underrun. Locally stored content might be more reliable, but could still be problematic if the air waves are really busy.

FWIW I ditched an old Netgear wireless modem router just before I got my HomePod as my Mac mini kept losing wireless connectivity with it. I've got something from D-Link but I'm not in front of it for a model number. I've also swtiched to a wired connection for the Mac mini for extra reliability.

tt2 (also in the UK and called Steve)