As highlighted by the folks over at MacRumors, Rene Ritchie’s review of the HomePod on iMore has revealed that any music streamed via HomePod does not count toward an Apple Music subscription’s device streaming limit, allowing single membership subscribers of Apple Music to stream a song on the HomePod while listening to music on another iPhone, iPad or Mac.
Prior to HomePod, if single membership users streamed Apple Music on an iPhone and then began listening to music on a Mac, for example, the iPhone would disconnect from the music and serve up a warning about the new stream.
When users get their HomePods this weekend, it appears that they won’t have to worry about the speaker taking up similar streaming limits on their Apple Music accounts.
While Apple Music family plans already support simultaneous streaming across multiple devices, the HomePod feature should work the same for single subscription users as well.
It must be noted that when using the feature, no music streamed via HomePod will count towards the subscriber’s overall taste profile, but if users want HomePod streams to affect recommendations they can ignore the setting. As pointed out by The Loop’s Jim Dalrymple, a setting in the Home app allows you to prevent the music played on HomePod from affecting the “For You” section of Apple Music.
Furthermore, the smart speaker also does not count toward the limit placed on devices associated with an Apple ID.
