Browser - Next track on Bandcamp won't start playing if the screen is locked

asked 2014-05-05 13:57:17 +0300

Teme
21 ●2 ●3 ●6

updated 2014-05-05 14:23:52 +0300

I ran into a minor annoyance while using Bandcamp's mobile version over 3G (Jolla's browser is served this web app by default - the "switch to desktop view" option is at the bottom of the page). The links provided are straight to an album for your convenience and I'm in no way affiliated with it.

To reproduce:

1. Navigate with the browser to: http://tenmillionsounds.bandcamp.com/album/finding-time
2. Song keeps playing and after set delay the screen is locked. For testing purposes you can fast forward so that there are only 10-20s of the song left and lock the screen manually (problem still occurs).
3. Observe that the next track does not start playing by itself
4. Unlock screen - next song starts immediately playing

Expected:

1. Navigate with the browser to: http://tenmillionsounds.bandcamp.com/album/finding-time
2. Next track after the other starts through the whole album even if screen has been locked (manually or automatically with set delay)

On IRC a bug in browser's sleep/standby functionality was suspected, although it could be a reasonable default to not let the browser perform any requests in the background after some time period (to conserve battery & bandwidth). The problem is probably encountered on any site which does not stream all of the content at once, but changes to the next item automatically once the previous one has finished (Youtube playlists, Soundcloud etc). I've performed no field testing in other services.