HomePod Issue with two Homepods

[Bazooka-joe]

Hi Guys,
Hoping that you might one able to assist me (and Apple) with a problem. I have one HomePod in my living room and one HomePod in the master bedroom. I have a problem getting them to play independently of each other.
In the Home App, I am unable to have both HomePods play different music. If I have music playing on one HomePod and start the other up, it pauses the first HomePod. So if I having music playing in the master bedroom and through Home, select the HomePod in the living room to start playing music, it pauses the one in the master bedroom and vice versa.
I can ask Siri to play the same band all over the house and that works but if i ask Siri to play different bands for different rooms, it pauses one of the HomePods.
If I have music playing in the living room and through Siri, I ask the HomePod in the living room to play music in the master bedroom, it starts the music in the master bedroom but stops playing music in the living room.

I have rebooted my network and done a hard reset on both HomePods.
I have removed both HomePods from Home and readded them.
I have tried to play the HomePods independently off each other from my iPhone and my iPad.
They both have separate names and Rooms in the Home app.
They are both on the same network.
They show up on AirPlay under different names.
Both HomePods are running 11.4.1 and my iPad 10.5 and iPhone X are also up to date with the latest iOS.

Two hours on the phone to a supervisor at Apple support with them remoting in to my devices so they can see the problem happening. They now have a recording of the issue and are sending it to the engineers.
I dont understand as i thought that the idea of multiple home pods was to be able to play different music in different rooms independently of each other.

Any ideas....oh and if i say to Siri "Hey Siri, play the Kaiser Chiefs in the living room and Status Quo in the bedroom", she responds says "Now playing the Kaiser Chiefs in the Living Room and Master Bedroom".......great :-(

 

[bgro]

“It just works”

 

[Bazooka-joe]

It doesn’t for me.
Apple have requested that I send the serial numbers of my two HomePods, Ipad 10.5 and iPhone X. Not sure why because I don’t think the problem is related to the Ipad and iPhone.
if I issue a Siri command to one of the HomePods to play music, it starts up and then if I issue a command to the same HomePod to play music on the second HomePod in the other room,it does that but stops playing music in the first homepod. Totally weird and goes against what they claim multi-room is capable off.

 

[Bazooka-joe]

I finally worked out the problem - it’s Apple Music, as to play more than one album from Apple Music on more than one device requires a family plan otherwise it will only play music on one device at anyone time unless you already own the music.
So if you have Apple Music and want multi room then you need to subscribe to a family plan.
As an example, the problem is that if you ask to play the Beatles on one HomePod and the Rolling Stones on another HomePod then, it will happily do that providing you own the music or some of the music but if it reaches a point where one HomePod is playing a track that you don’t actually own and the other HomePod plays a track at the same time that you don’t actually own then it will stop one of the HomePod playing because you don’t have a family plan and therefore cant play two songs from Apple Music at the same time if you never purchased those songs.
Why Apple support didn’t remind me of that. That’s a day of my life that I will never get back.

 

[Brookzy]

I am having this issue too. Before today I was able to stream different Apple Music content independently on each HomePod, even though I only have an individual Apple Music subscription.

One of my HomePods seemed to crash (the volume buttons were flashing) and the only way I could fix this was by resetting it to factory settings and setting it up again.

But now I can only use one at a time (or have both play the same thing).

I can still listen to music on my iPhone or another device, and still have a separate stream playing on a HomePod (so that's two simultaneous Apple Music streams) but if I begin playback on the second HomePod the first stops.

Apple said that HomePods do not count towards Apple Music streaming limits (https://www.macrumors.com/2018/02/07/homepod-streams-dont-count/) when it first came out.

So either

• HomePods do now count towards the stream count, or
• there is some sort of bug.

Is anyone else experiencing this?

 

[Bazooka-joe]

I am having this issue too. Before today I was able to stream different Apple Music content independently on each HomePod, even though I only have an individual Apple Music subscription.

One of my HomePods seemed to crash (the volume buttons were flashing) and the only way I could fix this was by resetting it to factory settings and setting it up again.

But now I can only use one at a time (or have both play the same thing).

I can still listen to music on my iPhone or another device, and still have a separate stream playing on a HomePod (so that's two simultaneous Apple Music streams) but if I begin playback on the second HomePod the first stops.

Apple said that HomePods do not count towards Apple Music streaming limits (https://www.macrumors.com/2018/02/07/homepod-streams-dont-count/) when it first came out.

So either

• HomePods do now count towards the stream count, or
• there is some sort of bug.

Is anyone else experiencing this?

Ah that’s useful to know. I am waiting for a call back from their engineers so I will remind them of that. If it is the case then it must be a bug

 

[Shanghaichica]

Does this only occur with Apple Music?

Can you get one HomePod to play say a podcast and another to play music?

 

[Brookzy]

Can you get one HomePod to play say a podcast and another to play music?

Yes.

 

[Shanghaichica]

Yes.

Thanks. I’ve just ordered a second HomePod so good to know I can use them both at the same time for different content.