How do you use it without needing a TV or display to navigate the UI?

you are being unnecessarily disingenuous

gp is most likely using a display that quickly boots into "source" mode – think hdmi input

> you are being unnecessarily disingenuous

I'm not, honestly. Think of AVR-integrated radio receivers and hi-fi CD players: a typical appliance-grade (non-raster) VFD/LCD display is sufficient for navigating through radio stations and CD tracks; I will admit that Alexa-style voice-control can work quite well for online services like Spotify or Apple Music, but even then I find myself frequently needing to reach for my phone (and wait for Amazon's webview-based Echo app to load) for anything nontrivial.

While a good modern TV can show a picture from standby in a few seconds, it "feels wrong" to me to have to turn-on an eye-burningly-bright main living-room TV just to select a song to play.

It also introduces a lot of fragility into the ecosystem. If your TV fails (which does happen sometimes), you're suddenly without access to almost all features of the hardware? Unacceptable.

Unacceptable? How often does that happen (> 10 years?) without one having an old computer lcd from 2016 as backup in the cellar? Or a dirt cheap mini hdmi 7-inch replacement ordered overnight on Amazon?

Aside my guess is the Apple TV does usually work “headless” in OP use case with music playing controlled from his phone. One only needs a tv for streaming video (obviously) and I think for initial setup.

Exactly, people upgrade their telly years before they reach the end of their functional life

People are still buying and selling CRT tv’s for retro gaming so you are correct.

I’ve had many more VFDs and small LCDs displays fail than televisions, and much prefer the separation of functions.

I don't like Apple and its 'stuffs' but if it works anything like Spotify, then I can control 'it/Spotify' from my PC/Firefox while the music is played by my phone to an bluetooth JBL. So even without a dedicated TV/screen, I can listen to Spotify in other devices. I assume the comment would benefit from a setup like that - smartphone to control, AppleTV and the rest for the audio.

Apple for some reason hasn’t implemented that feature, and it boggles the mind. Say I’m playing music on my iPhone and I try playing a track on my mac, it doesn’t ask me on which device to play, hell, it doesn’t even stop playing on my iPhone to start on my mac, it just puts an ugly warning in the middle of the screen saying something like “stop playing on your iPhone to listen to the song on this device”.

It’s actually insane to me.

I have used AM since launch and don’t understand what you’re complaining about exactly. I have never, not once, seen a message telling me to stop playing on one device to play on another with AM. Spotify otoh is super strict with licensing and does that. Why wouldn’t you want to be able to play 2 different streams in 2 different places?

I have my AM on my Sonos, my phone, my ATV, and my dad’s Sonos and have never seen a message that it’s playing elsewhere. With Spotify my setup absolutely would be impossible using the same account.

I personally don’t want the Spotify style playback features; keep them out of my AM please.

Edit: I forgot you can also now share a queue via Apple Music using airplay, even if others at the party don’t have an account.

They have this feature, it is called Hand-off I think. It works between iPhones and HomePods. Additionally there’s “control other devices”, which allows controlling the music played on other devices. That is between most Apple device categories, although I’m unsure about Mac support for it.

The ability to control what's playing on other devices (e.g. HomePod / Apple TV) is also available from the Music app on Mac.

Not the parent but my home theater receiver is AirPlay compatible so I just select tracks using my phone as if it were a HomePod or Bluetooth speaker. We also have a VSSL for other rooms in the house. Same deal.

I have my TV on which doesn’t bother me but I understand why it’s not ideal for all setups. If I select a song on my iPhone and airplay it to my AppleTV, it does a handover.

If you want to stay within the Apple ecosystem without the TV part, you could use an AVR with airplay built-in. Or get an AirPort Express, which can join a wifi network and become an Airplay client, and connect it via optical (mini toslink) to an AVR. And control it all from a phone or Mac.

At the risk of turning this into "please describe your setup in increasing detail to me," do you use Spotify for anything? I have a Marantz AVR and honestly it's kind of buggy, but I'm trying to connect directly to it from Spotify (mostly because that's just where my listening history is). Perhaps it would do better connecting into an Apple TV and running spotify on there?

I use a Chromecast Ultra for this, works with Spotify, Tidal, Youtube apps. Or, if you don't care about 4K get a regular 3rd gen Chromecast. These are NOT the newest gen Chromecasts with Google TV, these are 'dumb' devices that just receive streams and don't run apps.

Unfortunately as of a few years ago Google TV/Android TV forces ads for useless content in the home screen, taking up bandwidth and slowing load times. The 'dumb' Chromecasts can still talk to the AVR over HDMI-CEC to turn on power, adjust volume, etc.