Background music Android

If you want to play background music for your app only, then play it in a thread launched from your app/use AsyncTask class to do it for you.

The concept of services is to run in the background; By background, the meaning is usually when your app UI is NOT VISIBLE. True, it can be used just like you have (If you remember to stop it) but its just not right, and it consumes resources you shouldn't be using.

If you want to peform tasks on the background of your activity, use AsyncTask.

By the way, onStart is deprecated. When you do use services, implement onStartCommand.

UPDATE:

I think this code will work for you. Add this class (Enclosed in your activity class).

public class BackgroundSound extends AsyncTask<Void, Void, Void> {

    @Override
    protected Void doInBackground(Void... params) {
        MediaPlayer player = MediaPlayer.create(YourActivity.this, R.raw.test_cbr); 
        player.setLooping(true); // Set looping 
        player.setVolume(1.0f, 1.0f); 
        player.start(); 

        return null;
    }

}

Now, in order to control the music, save your BackgroundSound object instead of creating it annonymously. Declare it as a field in your activity:

BackgroundSound mBackgroundSound = new BackgroundSound();

On your activity's onResume method, start it:

public void onResume() {
    super.onResume();
    mBackgroundSound.execute(null);
}

And on your activity's onPause method, stop it:

public void onPause() {
    super.onPause();
    mBackgroundSound.cancel(true);
}

This will work.

AsyncTasks are good just for very short clips, but if it is a music file you will face problems like:

• You will not be able to stop/pause the music in middle. For me that is a real problem.

Here is few line from Android developers page about AsyncTasks

AsyncTasks should ideally be used for short operations (a few seconds at the most.) If you need to keep threads running for long periods of time, it is highly recommended you use the various APIs provided by the java.util.concurrent package such as Executor, ThreadPoolExecutor and FutureTask.

So currently I am looking in to other options and update the answer once I find the solution.