AirPods keep launching Apple Music

My AirPods, as well as many other people’s AirPods, launch the Apple Music app on our MacBooks – sometimes when we put them in our ears, sometimes when we take them out.

There have been multiple threads about this since 2020 and Apple support has repeatedly avoided acknowledging this as an issue and has failed to offer any reasonable solution.

This feature, obviously, is not a mistake, it’s intended to promote Apple Music. However, many of us don’t use Apple Music, and even those who do, don’t only put their AirPods in their ears to listen to music. This feature is annoying and unhelpful.

How can we stop this?