HomePod Shortcoming

The HomePod fits very nicely into my lifestyle. It certainly sounds great for its size and it fills up a room with music you can feel – something we lost when we started using tiny earbuds. Unfortunately, the biggest shortcoming of HomePod isn't its sound or Siri (Siri on HomePod is so much better than on the iPhone.) The HomePod's biggest shortcoming is Apple Music. Apple Music doesn't measure up when playing tunes of a specific genre or artist. Instead, I use Pandora to play music on my HomePod via Airplay.

I've been a subscriber of Pandora for years, specifically due to Apple Music's limitations and it's served me well. Since the beginning of Apple Music's streaming service, it's had a problem playing relevant tracks. Very frequently, Apple Music will start off playing relevant music and then, perhaps ten songs later, it gets off track. My most recent experience is when I asked HomePod to play music by Cole Porter from Apple Music. About 30 minutes later, Apple Music started playing Country Music covers of Cole Porter songs which is an entirely different genre. I've experienced the same thing with Apple Music songs from Philip Glass and Billy Joel. If I ask Apple Music to play songs by Billy Joel, it should not play classical music from his most recent album. That's not what anyone means when they ask to hear Billy Joel.

That got me wondering about the difference between how Apple Music and Pandora choose tunes. Perhaps I'll do a little digging.