Listen to Music Streams in the Background on an iPhone

One of the annoyances of an iPhone is that you are unable to multi-task, meaning that generally you are unable to run two iPhone Apps at the same time.

If you like listening to music, and stream it over the Internet in Apps like Last.fm, then you can’t do anything else with your iPhone, because as soon as you switch away from your open App it will automatically close.

There is a work-around that allows you listen to audio streams and use other features on your iPhone – well apart from surf the net that is!

OK it’s not ideal, but it’s the best you’re going to get I’m afraid!

It’s all about Safari

The key to get streaming music on your iPhone is to use the iPhone’s web browser (Safari) to do it. You also need a stream that the iPhone can play, a good example of this is the BBC Radio streams found on BBC iPlayer.

Point Safari to www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer and you will be presented with the iPhone version of the site.  Select Radio, and then choose the show that you would like to listen to.  Wait for the QuickTime play icon to appear and then tap it.

Safari will then change to the QuickTime media player and will load and play the stream:

Once the stream has started, you are then able to press the iPhone’s ‘home button’ and fire up another App. When you want to get back to the stream, just tap Safari!

Surfing the Internet

Unfortunately as the QuickTime App takes over Safari, you are unable to surf the Internet while music is streaming. Although not ideal, it does mean that you can use the majority of other apps on your iPhone.

Making & receiving calls

You will still be able to make and receive calls while the stream is playing, the iPhone will pause and resume the stream when this happens.

It’s not ideal..

You will be able to text, send emails and do pretty much anything else that doesn’t interfere with the stream, sadly this doesn’t include web-browsing! Be careful with other audio Apps that may trigger the stream to stop.