None of the solutions provided here actually work. They may seem to work, but the player keeps coming back. A bit of a work-around, but it seems to work here: keep your headset turned off and your AirPods boxed until *after* you turn on your iPhone/iPad. Someone at Apple must have had a bad night and assumed that any time you use your headset/AirPods, you want to play music using the Apple player. I have no suggestions turned on, no notifications, no nothing. The player app doesn't show when no bluetooth audio devices are connected, but does always appear on the lock screen when a bluetooth audio device is connecting when I open the iPad. On my iPhone, the music app isn't even included in the list of 'included controls', but always shown. It's not a feature, it's a total nuisance.

Un-ticked, turned off, removed from widgets, rebooted, etc. etc. etc. and it still keeps coming back. Is it because I have a subscription to a competing service? iPad Pro with AirPods and headset. It started after updating to 14.2.