How do I get my music (like Pandora) to keep playing after the Surface shuts the screen off while on battery?

I was having the same issue playing Pandora and I happened to try something that seems to work. Play Pandora using desktop ie and then open up the Xbox music app. Once open I can turn the screen off and Pandora continues to play.

I love my Surface but for all the great things it is there are a number of little annoying things like this audio playback through IE issue.  It's great that there is Flash support meaning we don't require an App because we can stream from IE, yet the thing won't continue to play audio when the Surface sleeps.  It's these little issues that give users the impression that MS products are not refined.  It wouldn't be bad if MS was quick at patching these issues but my experience with WP pretty much tells me Surface updates will be rather slow.

slyej,

I was having the same issue, and my son (who works at Microsoft) made a suggestion that works for me. Now, to listen to Pandora while surfing the web, I open Pandora through the Desktop tile. That allows me to listen to my favorite music while I do my surfing on IE. I placed a shortcut too Pandora on the Quicklaunch taskbar which makes launching Pandora even easier.  Hope this helps.

Hello slyel, 

Be sure to check for app updates. There are numerous updates released daily and the one for your the app in question could fix the problem. A workaround that has proven to be helpful is to prevent the device from entering sleep mode by extending the time the Surface stays awake.