I have to disagree with this. I have endless issues switching the playback between my iPhone and HomePod, sometimes I’ll have to quit the app just to get the right device to play music. When I’m playing the song on my iPhone with playback on the HomePod it sometimes ‘forgets’ the HomePod is the playback device and using the controls on the iPhone to pause the song etc do nothing forcing me to use Siri to stop playback on the HomePod. Not to mention how useless Siri is when asking to play certain things (e.g. trying to play an album that has a song with the same name on it). I generally like the HomePod but the integration (and Siri in general) are massively lacking.

I’ve had similar issues with HomePod when it comes to other apps (e.g. playing podcasts from Overcast using AirPlay), but the Apple Music integration has never been a problem, that has always just worked. Siri sometimes gets confused about what you’re asking (as with all these systems), but it’s less than I expected and at an acceptible rate for me.

Have you tried saying “play album _____”?

This is what I always do and it works fine

Actually it does work with Spotify, and pretty well in my experience. I guess Apple are wary of antitrust rules.

Yep, until a couple years ago you had to say “Hey Siri, play Tom Waits on Spotify,” otherwise it would always try Apple Music even if you didn’t have a subscription or the app wasn’t installed. But they changed it - probably for antitrust reasons, like you said - and now it’s pretty seamless.

Nope. Then you're streaming FROM your iPhone.

As far as i know there is no native Spotify for HomePod : https://www.macrumors.com/2021/11/22/spotify-users-impatient...

In my experience, nothing Homepod and Siri related “just works”. I do not even bother to ask it what date it is anymore.