Music stops playing on MS Surface when screen turns off.

Anonymous
2012-12-20T21:34:16+00:00

I have a Microsoft Surface. I have my mp3's in my default Music folder. When I play an album, a song will play but it will not play the next song if the screen has turned off. I always need to hit the power button again to turn the screen back on in order to play the next song. This makes this device useless as a music player as I have to turn it back on every few minutes. Often the song will start skipping as well when the screen turns off. This is for the Music app but also any other music playing apps I've tried such as Music Info. And please don't tell me this is by design. It is not by design. It's a bug. It would be nice to know when this will be resolved. Playing an MP3 is a basic function that should just work out of the box. It really can't be that hard. If a $30 mp3 player can do it I sure expect my $700 tablet to.

Windows for home | Other | Music, photos, and video

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  1. Anonymous
    2012-12-25T03:02:27+00:00

    Greetings Gglazer,

    Have you tried using Ray's suggestion of using the Presentation settings? 

    For now, using Presentation mode or leaving the screen on, may be your best work around.

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  2. Anonymous
    2013-02-25T03:57:57+00:00

    I am having this issue on my surface pro with xbox music. flip the touch cover over the screen and playback will stop within 5 seconds. leaving the screen on is a very short term workaround. Is there a community visible bug tracking/reporting system where we can see the status of this sort of minor but frustrating usability defects?

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  3. Anonymous
    2013-02-25T04:01:47+00:00

    As a more effective work around I can recommend using Start-P to switch to second screen only if you have a keyboard attached. Start-P again will restore the display.

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  4. Anonymous
    2013-02-25T09:03:30+00:00

    I have the Surface Pro with iTunes installed and I don't have this problem.  With iTunes, the music will continue to play after the screen times out.  This happens whether or not the keyboard is attached.  If I have the keyboard attached, I can flip it back away from the screen and I can still listen to music when the screen times out.  This works great when on a plane.

    The only time the music stops is if I flip the keyboard over the screen which then puts the Pro to sleep as designed. 

    I haven't tried with music in the Music folder.  I will test this soon.

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  5. Anonymous
    2013-06-23T13:52:43+00:00

    I am seeing this with various Windows 8 devices (I have a Surface Pro, a Dell PC and HP Laptop) with all the music apps I have used - the Win8 Music app, Zune, Pandora, I-Heart-Radio, etc. Screen goes to sleep, music stops. Screen wakes up, music resumes. I tried setting the PC to never sleep, so it only the screen that is sleeping.

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