Media keys (play, skip, back) do not work on new Apple Magic Keyboard A2520

Machine: 2021 Macbook Pro M1 Max (5 months old)

Peripheral: Apple Magic Keyboard A2520 (1 day old)

MacOS: Ventura 13.2.1

I've seen others have this issue (google "media keys not working mac"), but none of the solutions I've seen thus far address it.

The media keys on the new keyboard are not recognized by iTunes (i.e. hitting play/pause does not play or pause the music).

Steps I've taken:

✅ Rebooted everything / turned everything off and on again multiple times

✅ Disabled "Use F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys (was already disabled)

✅ Disabled: Media key handling in google chrome (chrome://flags/#hardware-media-key-handling)

✅ Attempted "launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.rcd.plist" <- This throws an error.

I spoke with chat support, phone support, and now they have scheduled a visit to the apple store genius bar.

Keyboard is brand new. Macbook is quite new, but I had this issue *out of the box* as well with an older apple keyboard. At the time I chalked it up to the keyboard being older, but it seems buying a new keyboard did not resolve the issue either.

Has anyone ever gotten to the bottom of this?

PS: Curiously the new magic keyboard is not listed under "peripherals" (or any other section as far as I can tell) in the available topics.