Apple Music Launching when F8 is pressed, how to turn off?

Whenever I hit my play button on my 2022 Mac Air, Apple music will auto-launch. It is very annoying, because it will launch even if I'm just trying to play/pause my music on spotify or pause watching something.

I cannot for the life of me find a way to turn this feature off. Ideally, I'd like to entirely delete or disable Apple music because I never use it, that way I can replace the music tab in the top right drop-down menu with Spotify, but apparently that is not possible anymore?

Any information on how to stop Apple Music from launching like this, or a way to disable it would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!