WP8.1 BackgroundMediaPlayer not playing on device, but works on emulator

Question

I have a universal Windows store project. In Windows Phone part, I use a BackgroundMediaPlayer.Current to play audio. The app getting access to media files through KnownFolders.MusicLibrary. The problem is when I run my app on emulator with virtual SD Card, music plays and all goes nice. But when I deploy the app to my Lumia 920 running WP8.1 DevPreview, and press 'Play' button, then nothing happens. No exceptions, no force-close... Completely nothing. Question: Is this an internal storage issue (Lumia 920 have no SD Card) or BackgroundMediaPlayer have a bug or bug is hiding in OS preview version?

Answer 1

I just had the same problem.

If you register to the handler: mediaPlayer.MediaFailed += mediaPlayer_MediaFailed; you will find out that you get an UnauthorizedAccessException when playing local songs (not on SD card).

Here is what i did and how i solved it:

The error occurs due to BackgroundMediaPlayer.Current.SetUriSource, which for whatever reason only works for files on SD cards.

So instead of passing the path of the file to SetUriSource, I loaded the StorageFile with

StorageFile sf = await StorageFile.GetFileFromPathAsync(musicDataFullPath);

and then

mediaPlayer.SetStreamSource((await sf.OpenStreamForReadAsync()).AsRandomAccessStream());

and so now it works....