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I'm developing an Windows Phone application, that plays/streams music in background.

To accomplish that, I tried to use both Microsoft.Phone.BackgroundAudio.BackgroundAudioPlayer and Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Media.MediaPlayer classes. In both cases everything worked just fine, so I was wondering, what are advantages/disadvantages of these methods, because now I can't decide which one is better.

The only thing that I don't like in BackgroundAudioPlayer, is that I need to create separate project for audio agent, and worry about transferring track info via IsolatedStorage. But since I've done that already. It's not a problem.

So are there any other differences between those two classes?

Tonik
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2 Answers2

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It depends on your program. If you want to play your background music only while using your program, you should use MediaPlayer. Otherwise you have to take care of the BackgroundAudioPlayer in any situation. Also this will annoy users, who also want to listen to their own music while using your application.

Otherwise, if your background music is the main purpose of the program, the user would like to start your music and switch to other programs. Then it keeps playing and you can control the music in the volume bar. That's why you have to create a background task for BackgroundAudioPlayer. The main application will stop in both ways when switching to other programs.

In short: game background music should never play after leaving the game (use MediaPlayer) - but I never want to watch my music player counting the time, while listening to my music library (use BackgroundAudioPlayer).

Matt
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  • This makes sense, but MediaPlayer runs in background, (MediaElement is the one that requires app to be on foreground). Even more, MediaPlayer acts like Music hub, so if I start a song with it and then click on UVC's song name, phone navigates to Music hub (not my App). – Tonik Aug 17 '13 at 22:34
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I believe MediaPlayer requires the application to be in the foreground. BackgroundAudioPlayer will let the user start a track, exit your application, and the music will continue to play and the agent can respond to the UVC.

Make sure you use a Mutex when you communicate between the foreground app and the background audio agent.

Derek Beattie
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  • About foreground limitation, read my comment on **Matt**'s answer. Mutex part is more interesting, because I couldn't find a way to create single instance that will be available in both App and Agent Projects. So I just wrote info in IsolatedStorageSettings, hoping that .NET Framework will take care of it :) – Tonik Aug 17 '13 at 22:41
  • http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14381836/easy-way-to-save-game-in-wp7-silverlight/14382853#14382853 – Derek Beattie Aug 18 '13 at 03:35