Apple Music no longer allows parallel streaming on HomePod & iPhone without a family account

HomePod update

Although Apple’s HomePod page states that AirPlay 2 lets you “ask Siri to play jazz in the living room and the Moana soundtrack in the kids’ room,” it doesn’t make it clear that multi-device streaming requires a family account. Apple says a now-fixed bug permitted individual subscribers to listen to different music on their HomePod and iPhone.

Before this odd bug, you could enjoy some music on an iPhone while your kids simultaneously listened to different music on the HomePod in the living room.

But according to user complaints on Reddit, trying to play music in parallel on your Siri speaker and iOS device now prompts the music on the Siri speaker to stop playing.

Users began seeing this in the past few days, it would seem.

Parallel streaming now requires a family account. “If I start music on my HomePod, my iPhone stops and tells me that a different device is using the account,” reads the Reddit post.

Apple’s acknowledged that this feature is actually a bug that has since been fixed.

I called Apple and the employee told me the parallel streaming would have been a bug which has been fixed, so that from now on parallel streaming on the HomePod and a second device over the same Apple ID is not possible.

Another Redditor has heard the same thing from Apple Support.

I wasn’t able to confirm this because I have a family Apple Music account, not a personal one. For what it’s worth, 9to5Mac has observed that Apple Music’s terms and conditions do not state any exception for HomePods, so there’s that.

In other words, you will need to upgrade your sole Apple Music subscription to a family account at $15 per month in order to continue having the ability for members of your household to listen to different music in different rooms at the same time.

A family account lets you stream songs on up to six devices at a time.

Are you having this issue? If so, meet us in comments!