Hello brad8148 and welcome to Apple Support Communities.

I see you're having an issue when playing music and podcasts from your iPhone using AirPods Pro.

• Is it possible to set Spotify as the default program when the 'media' keys (play, pause, previous, next, etc) are pressed on the Mac keyboard? For the most part when Spotify is open, the 'media' keys work fine. But every once and a while iTunes will pop up when you hit them.
• The Rewind, Play/Pause, and Skip buttons (F7, F8, F9) on my Macbook Pro 13in. Have stopped working. I read on other forums that they would work with a long delay in between pressing it and it actually working, but they have stopped working altogether for me.

You mention that sometimes you have to tap the Play button more than once in order to get audio going. Does this ever happen when you are not using the AirPods Pro?

Spotify won't respond to the Play/Pause button without manually pressing play/pause in the app first, even when it's in focus. After pressing that, Spofity will respond to the Play/Pause keyboard button. So I guess it's just a minor bug rather than some plot by Apple to snuff out 3rd party music services ¯ (ツ)/¯.

If it only happens when using the AirPods Pro, then try resetting them. The article here has a title about not being able to connect, but the reset steps in it are valid for this issue as well.

Spotify Play Pause Windows Hotkey

Pause Play Button Mac Spotify App

Cheers.