Homepod pausing music

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 Steve,

I think you are describing a different pausing problem to the original post.

The problem I have encountered, along with the person starting this thread is that the HomePod pauses randomly when NOT using AirPlay (I.e either using the iPhone as a remote, or by asking Siri for a playlist from the HomePod).

Sounds like there is a lot going on here and I hope they get it fixed soon. Still waiting for an engineer update.

Hi tt2 ( aka Steve in the UK too 🙂 )

Ok, when i first played some music ( today ) with Siri it was from the Cloud ( No iTunes ), it worked fine.

But when I played some of the same music via iTunes on my Mac I got the 'pause' issue .

My router is the latest from BT and I'm on Infinity 2, which I'm sure you know is Fast.

I doubt its anything to do with the router as if it was then i would get problems even when using Siri, it all comes via Wifi and my router.

Its very strange as to why all this happens. Me, well i don't think Apple did any sort of 'Out of the Box' testing, it was all in house. By that I mean, if it were me ( A big wig at Apple on the HomePod project ) I would have used people ( like us ) as testers, and not just in the US, all around the world , say 20 in the US, 10 in the UK, 10 in OZ, 20 in South America etc etc with the simple instructions to just set it up and use it how you would ( be that via the cloud, iTunes on your Computer ( Airplay ), iPhone, iPad or what ever. Give it to the people who are actually going to purchase it and use it.

May be I'm wrong but ....... !!

Oh before i forget ( having just read your reply again ) I have my Mac Mini plugged in via a cable direct to the router and with wifi on.

So lets see what happens 😉

Glad to chat

Steve ( another Steve in the mix )

Hey Bruce...I just wanted to give you all an update as the HomePod problem, for me at least, is getting worse.

I went with my wife to our cottage for a week and noticed that in our car using CarPlay that our Smooth Jazz playlist just paused and stopped playing after about thirty minute or so. Susan wrote you about that episode.

I then switched to the TuneIn app through CarPlay and played 101smoothjazz.com uninterrupted all the way (about 188 miles from our home in Royal Oak, or about 2 hours and 15 minutes worth!)

At our cottage I have three Tivoli radios connected to AirPort express’s and streamed using AirPlay and our TuneIN app and 101smoothejazz.com to one radio using my iMac and the second one using an iPod plugged in to the USB power adapter so not to run the battery out.

NO PAUSING on either radio! This was the case throughout our stay at the cottage. I think I may have tried streaming from the iPod our smooth groove playlist from our Apple Music account and don’t remember it pausing but I would have to redo that test to be sure.

When we arrived home we asked each HomePod to “shuffle” our smooth groove playlist and all three pods played without pausing for about four hours until we went to bed.

The next day we did the same thing and asked all three to shuffle our smoothgroove playlist and all three HomePods played uninterrupted for about 8 hours until I asked one HomePod to pause so we could watch the news.

When I paused one HomePod, the other two HomePods started to randomly pause. And from that moment on it was back to the same frustration of randomly pausing or stopping before a song ended and then starting another or just stopping altogether and going dark!

Today (April 4, 2018) something NEW! I asked one HomePod to shuffle our smooth groove playlist and the HomePod said there was a problem and to check my account in the Home App.

When I checked there was an exclamation point next to the HomePod icon and it said unreachable I think?

I unplugged the HomePod and reset the device and added it to my account.

Then when I asked it to play our smooth groove playlist it took about four or five tries before Siri got it right.

I had the same playlist playing on the HomePod in the master bedroom and when I ask the HomePod to do the same downstairs on the one I just reset it turned off the HomePod in the Master bedroom!

I don't know what to do anymore. Have yet to get any promising word from Apple engineering...

Take care...

Thanks, William. It sounds like you’re somewhere ahead of me technologically; I didn’t understand absolutely everything you said, and I’m not familiar with much of your equipment. After my last somewhat exasperated note, I called my adviser, Julie, and left a message about my frustration. I haven’t heard back from her (!), but today I left her another message that I am having consistently good luck asking Siri to play my playlists, or something from Apple’s library. I don’t run the thing all day, but have run it for two or three hours several times and haven’t run into problems.

But after all this time and effort, trying to use airplay is still a disaster. The pausing happens so often that I have more or less stopped trying. I’m not sure I understand how you could get all three of your HomePods to play the same thing simultaneously without using airplay, and as far as I can tell, the common difficulty in our posts has to do with the HomePod, not the iPhone, equipment, or bandwidth differences.

I’m not sure why Julie has stopped calling me, but I left a message for her today asking if she had heard anything else from the engineers. I was interested that one person in this thread said his advisor was surprised to hear that this is a common problem. Two advisers told me that they don’t put a lot of weight on the community forum because people’s setups are different. There certainly seems to be several people telling their advisors the same thing. It seems one has to go through a lot of exasperation with advisers before anything gets referred to the engineers.

One difference is that I think some people have had difficulty even with Siri.

Bruce

So let's recap: I paid $350 for a speaker that doesn't work right. But the manufacturer is not expected to fix the problem. Instead, I'm supposed to invest my time in reading pages of posts written by other people who have the same problem and no solutions.

And help from actual Apple representatives when you post and call? Yeah, no. My phone call to customer service about this issue was absurd. The rep confidently blamed my wifi -- when no other device I own has ever had connectivity problems. But, clearly, that was the only reply on the rep's script, so more wasted time, more frustration.

I've experimented by telling my HomePod to play "Standards". So it's not even looking at *my* songs, but picking out an Apple Music "just for you". It will start off playing songs and later I check and it has stopped. It's in my bedroom, and maybe it doesn't find any people there, I don't know.

I don’t know of a way except to ask Siri and see if it responds.

All I know is it’s constantly going off on mine. I use Siri a lot and I’ll ask and get no response, then a second later I’ll try and I do, then back to nothing. On & off all day. Tonight while cooking dinner I asked to set timers, it was, then it stopped saying “ok your timer is set for five minutes”. So I’d ask do I have a timer running and it says no you don’t have a timer. I had to keep asking and asking. Then the timer was going off on my watch instead and the HomePod usually overrides all other devices when saying hey Siri. Which indicated homepod never received my request

Like you all my computers and devices have internet. So I suggested to try the reboot as it might just need a kick in the backside so to speak. The wifi reboot often fixes issues on my devices. It’s easier than a HomePod Reset.

Im really finding it hard to learn how to operate the HomePod.

I reset it and started playing music an hour or two ago.

A minute ago I noticed that the HomePod in the other room was quiet. I checked both my Mac's iTunes, and my phone. They both show a song - with the "play" button ready to be pushed.

I just got this as a housewarming present last weekend. Since we installed it or they tried to set it up I should say it was miss behaving. I have tried to use it twice in the last week and every time it will just pause in the middle of a song like there’s bad connectivity but I know there isn’t because I am watching TV when I’m not using the thing and it’s completely fine! It’s beyond annoying I mean it’s almost like trying to listen to a song on dial-up or something I don’t even know how to explain it it’s definitely the worst experience I’ve ever had I have a Bluetooth Bose speaker works great I don’t know I may just return it! Sorry :/

It is indeed beyond annoying. It keeps stopping . When I hit the top to resume playback , it doesn’t t go back to the playlist I was on but to my song library.

Im not sure if it’s different asking it to play my playlist or air playing from my devices. I prefer the latter so I can control it from my device, but maybe the former it wasn’t doing this stopping so much.

Its like they out this thing out without testing testing if It was ready.

You just cant depend on it to work

Vancouver22 wrote:

Im not sure if it’s different asking it to play my playlist or air playing from my devices. I prefer the latter so I can control it from my device

See Remote control for HomePod, not using AirPlay. Control from your device without sending the data over your network twice.

tt2

This still happens a lot.

Last night, when I noticed it stopped playing the Apple Music channel, I went to my iMac, and looked at the speaker button in iTunes and saw that it believed the HomePod was playing music.

Weird.

Mine just started skipping songs in a playlist from my iPhone. Well it didn’t really skip, but played a song from further up my playlist and then resumed to what should have been the next song before it played the wrong one. .