Impossible to stop AVPlayer

If you declare player as an optional variable, you can then set the player to nil to deallocate it.

Silly example but it shows what happens:

import UIKit
import AVFoundation

class ViewController: UIViewController {

    @IBOutlet weak var btnPlay: UIButton!

    var player:AVPlayer?

    override func viewDidLoad() {
        super.viewDidLoad()
    }

    @IBAction func btnPress(sender: AnyObject) {
        if (btnPlay.titleLabel?.text == "Play") {
            initPlayer()
            btnPlay.setTitle("Stop", forState: UIControlState.Normal)
        } else {
            stopPlayer()
            btnPlay.setTitle("Play", forState: UIControlState.Normal)
        }
    }

    func initPlayer()  {
        if let play = player {
            print("playing")
            play.play()
        } else {
            print("player allocated")
            player = AVPlayer(URL: NSURL(string: "http://streaming.radio.rtl.fr/rtl-1-48-192")!)
            print("playing")
            player!.play()
        }
    }

    func stopPlayer() {
        if let play = player {
            print("stopped")
            play.pause()
            player = nil
            print("player deallocated")
        } else {
            print("player was already deallocated")
        }
    }
}

From this post I found the best solution to completely stop AVPlayer before you leave or start a new player:

videoPlayer.replaceCurrentItemWithPlayerItem(nil)

[Update] For SWIFT 3:

player.replaceCurrentItem(with: nil)