gp is most likely using a display that quickly boots into "source" mode – think hdmi input
It’s actually insane to me.
I have my AM on my Sonos, my phone, my ATV, and my dad’s Sonos and have never seen a message that it’s playing elsewhere. With Spotify my setup absolutely would be impossible using the same account.
I personally don’t want the Spotify style playback features; keep them out of my AM please.
Edit: I forgot you can also now share a queue via Apple Music using airplay, even if others at the party don’t have an account.
I'm not, honestly. Think of AVR-integrated radio receivers and hi-fi CD players: a typical appliance-grade (non-raster) VFD/LCD display is sufficient for navigating through radio stations and CD tracks; I will admit that Alexa-style voice-control can work quite well for online services like Spotify or Apple Music, but even then I find myself frequently needing to reach for my phone (and wait for Amazon's webview-based Echo app to load) for anything nontrivial.
While a good modern TV can show a picture from standby in a few seconds, it "feels wrong" to me to have to turn-on an eye-burningly-bright main living-room TV just to select a song to play.
Aside my guess is the Apple TV does usually work “headless” in OP use case with music playing controlled from his phone. One only needs a tv for streaming video (obviously) and I think for initial setup.