Quirks of Android MediaPlayer API

MediaPlayer when running in services and data source as streaming URLs especially will have to take care of the below 

the MediaPlayer type needs to be AudioStreamType like below 

mediaPlayer.setAudioStreamType(AudioManager.STREAM_MUSIC);

mediaPlayer.setDataSource(url);

mediaPlayer.prepare(); // might take long! (for buffering, etc)

mediaPlayer.start();

While normally the prepare can be fast, to be a robust application, it needs to listen for the prepare callbacks. the call to prepare() can take a long time to execute, because it might involve fetching and decoding media data. So, as is the case with any method that may take long to execute, you should never call it from your application's UI thread. Doing that will cause the UI to hang until the method returns, which is a very bad user experience and can cause an ANR (Application Not Responding) error. Even if you expect your resource to load quickly, remember that anything that takes more than a tenth of a second to respond in the UI will cause a noticeable pause and will give the user the impression that your application is slow.

Instead of creating a separate thread, we could also do this by using the method prepareAsync. This method starts preparing the media in the background and returns immediately. When the media is done preparing, the onPrepared() method of the MediaPlayer.OnPreparedListener, configured through setOnPreparedListener() is called.

One another important item is to be careful is to release the resources which was used by the player. This can be achieved by calling release() method. 

Because the Android system tries to conserve battery while the device is sleeping, the system tries to shut off any of the phone's features that are not necessary, including the CPU and the WiFi hardware. However, if your service is playing or streaming music, you want to prevent the system from interfering with your playback.

To ensure that the CPU continues running while your MediaPlayer is playing, call the setWakeMode() method when initializing your MediaPlayer. Once you do, the MediaPlayer holds the specified lock while playing and releases the lock when paused or stopped:

mMediaPlayer = new MediaPlayer();

// ... other initialization here ...

mMediaPlayer.setWakeMode(getApplicationContext(), PowerManager.PARTIAL_WAKE_LOCK);

the wake lock acquired in this example guarantees only that the CPU remains awake. If you are streaming media over the network and you are using Wi-Fi, you probably want to hold a WifiLock as well, which you must acquire and release manually. 

WifiLock wifiLock = ((WifiManager) getSystemService(Context.WIFI_SERVICE))

.createWifiLock(WifiManager.WIFI_MODE_FULL, "mylock");

wifiLock.acquire();

When network is no longer needed, can use the release method to release the lock

wifiLock.release();

references:

http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/media/mediaplayer.html