html5 audio player - jquery toggle click play/pause?

You can call native methods trough trigger in jQuery. Just do this:

$('.play').trigger("play");

And the same for pause: $('.play').trigger("pause");

EDIT: as F... pointed out in the comments, you can do something similar to access properties: $('.play').prop("paused");

Well, I'm not 100% sure, but I don't think jQuery extends/parses those functions and attributes (.paused, .pause(), .play()).

try to access those over the DOM element, like:

$('.player_audio').click(function() {
  if (this.paused == false) {
      this.pause();
      alert('music paused');
  } else {
      this.play();
      alert('music playing');
  }
});