HomePod is here and competitors are taking notice.
California-based Sonos has decided to greet Apple’s HomePod competitor in an amusing way by tweeting out a snarky “Welcome to the Party Mix” playlist hosted on Spotify along with a warm welcome message, as first noted by Zac Hall over at 9to5Mac.
“Good luck with your HomePod launch Apple,” reads the tweet. “We made you a playlist.”
Good luck with your #homepod launch @Apple. We made you a playlist. https://t.co/zh8KctGAJe
— Sonos (@Sonos) February 9, 2018
The 21-song playlist, the author notes, is “precisely picked to deliver a very specific message to Apple as each song adds up to a hidden message.”
Here’s the list of songs included in the playlist:
Hello / Apple / Something About Us / Together / Feels Right / Even Though / You’re Crazy / For This / Home / POD / Remember / Two Is Better Than One / Just Playing (Dreams) / It’s A Party / Everybody’s Coming To My House / Even You / Come As You Are / Fruit Machine / No Matter What You’re Told / We’re Going To Be Friends / Over Everything
Nice work, Zac, I chuckled at the “Fruit Machine” dig.
HomePod, as I’m sure you are aware by now, does not support Spotify yet.
Currently, Apple Music subscribers can ask Siri to play any song from Apple’s 40-million-track catalog. Non-subscribers can ask the smart assistant to read the latest news, play podcasts and more. iTunes Match or Apple Music subscribers can also play their uploaded tracks provided all of the metadata required for Siri intelligence is in place.
As a reminder, these audio sources are supported by HomePod at launch:
- Apple Music—HomePod users can ask Siri to play any of over 45 million songs available on Apple Music. A subscription is required.
- iTunes Store music purchases—HomePod users can ask Siri to play any songs, albums or audiobooks purchased from iTunes Store.
- iCloud Music Library—HomePod users can ask Siri to play any songs uploaded to a user’s iCloud Music Library, including songs imported from other sources such as CDs, with an Apple Music or iTunes Match subscription.
- Beats 1 live radio—HomePod users can ask Siri to play Apple’s official radio station.
- Podcasts—HomePod users can ask Siri to play any podcast episodes from the iTunes podcast directory.
- AirPlay—HomePod users can use AirPlay to play other audio, like Spotify music, from an iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Apple TV or Mac. AirPlay 2, coming later this year, is required to stream audio from these sources to multiple HomePods.
I’m convinced that a future HomePod update will extend the product’s functionality. As a matter of fact, I fully expect Apple to provide APIs for developers to support third-party music streaming apps such as Spotify running directly on the speaker itself.
Thoughts?