The experience depends on context. In a lot of ways HomePods feel similar to Dubai (bear with me on this analogy). If you're a reasonably well off person from a

The experience depends on context. In a lot of ways HomePods feel similar to Dubai (bear with me on this analogy). If you're a reasonably well off person from a first world country, Dubai on the surface is really impressive. Huge public works projects with insane architecture lead to a city that's quite impressive. If you're a migrant worker from a third world country, the city is entirely different. Hash working conditions with very little support lead to a miserable experience. In the same way, Apple Music and other first-party ecosystem things sound great on HomePods. The sound is unrivalled at its price point. It really is amazing how good of a device they made. For third party music sources such as Spotify, the experience is quite different. The HomePod subreddit is full of issues with playing Spotify on the HomePod, even over Airplay[0]. It was detrimental to the point that Spotify filed a formal complaint to the EU last year[1], and support was finally added this year at WWDC[2] for non-Apple audio sources. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/HomePod/search?q=spotify&restrict_sr=on&sort=relevance&t=all https://www.reddit.com/r/HomePod/search?q=spotify&restrict_s... [1] https://9to5mac.com/2019/03/13/spotify-files-complaint-with-european-commission/ https://9to5mac.com/2019/03/13/spotify-files-complaint-with-... [2] https://9to5mac.com/2020/06/22/homepod-music-services/ https://9to5mac.com/2020/06/22/homepod-music-services/