As an android coder for an app that reads notifications out loud, I can tell you exactly what spotify changed, and how (with absolutely minimal dev effort) they can fix the problem. I can tell you this because I just had to put in a patch for the app I work on to work around spotify's bug in this system.
What they did:
When you're playing audio in Android, on the Media stream (where spotify, the app I work on, and every maps app I've tried all play), you can have the option to handle something called Audio Ducking. You do so by doing 3 things:
1) Make one of your classes implement the android.media.AudioManager.OnAudioFocusChangeListener interface.
2) Have that class implement the onAudioFocusChange(int focusChange) method of that interface, which notifies your app when you've either gained or lost audio focus. Audio focus is a complicated topic, too big to go into here, but suffice to say, Spotify has to implement this method to do anything (correct or not) upon another app like a Maps app playing on its stream.
3) Check for the android.media.AudioManager.AUDIOFOCUS_LOSS_TRANSIENT_CAN_DUCK integer in that method. This is the right thing to do, as you want to duck your music down to be quiet, so the notification can play. Previously, they only looked for android.media.AudioManager.AUDIOFOCUS_LOSS_TRANSIENT, since they didn't do anything different for ducking. Their handling of android.media.AudioManager.AUDIOFOCUS_LOSS_TRANSIENT is totally correct, has been working for months, and still works today. I know that it's still working because when I modified the app I work on to not allow other apps to duck, it reverts right back to the correct "pause track till the notification's done" behavior.
Where they goofed:
In whatever section of that method handles AUDIOFOCUS_LOSS_TRANSIENT_CAN_DUCK, instead of just turning down their volume, they also turned down the system media stream volume. I know this because (and you can try this for yourselves) you can mash the volume up button as soon as the notification comes in, and both the song and the notification slide right back up to normal volume. However, every time a new notification comes in, the volume jumps immediately back to the low level they've set it to go to whenever they notice they should duck. You have to keep upping the volume every time, the only way this could be is if they set the volume every time.
What they need to do to fix it:
Take out the line in their implementation of android.media.AudioManager.OnAudioFocusChangeListener.onAudioFocusChange(int focusChange) that's calling something like
theirAudioManagerInstance.setStreamVolume(AudioManager.STREAM_MUSIC, wayTooLow, null);
It may be a slightly different variation on that call, but somewhere in there, they're messing with the volume of the media stream, and that's causing the issue.
Any questions, please respond in this thread, I'll get the e-mails.
-Scott-
Staff / Moderator/ 2 years ago in Social & Random