# Allow device music playback \[iOS / Android\]

**URL:** https://qa.fmod.com/t/allow-device-music-playback-ios-android/11783
**Category:** FMOD Engine
**Created:** [January 6, 2015, 4:24am UTC](https://qa.fmod.com/t/allow-device-music-playback-ios-android/11783 "2015-01-06T04:24:08Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![buzzrick](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/qa.fmod.com/buzzrick/32/473_2.png) [@buzzrick](https://qa.fmod.com/u/buzzrick)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2015, 4:24am UTC](https://qa.fmod.com/t/allow-device-music-playback-ios-android/11783/1 "2015-01-06T04:24:08Z")

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Hi.  
How can we allow music from a background application (such as the iOS music app or podcasts app) to continue playing while our game runs. It is a fairly common feature that a lot of games provide, but I can’t see how to do this with the FMOD Studio API.

Can someone point me in the right direction for this. I’m unsure exactly what to even search for.

Cheers  
Beric

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### Author: ![mathew](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/qa.fmod.com/mathew/32/431_2.png) [@mathew](https://qa.fmod.com/u/mathew)
#### Post date: [January 8, 2015, 1:04am UTC](https://qa.fmod.com/t/allow-device-music-playback-ios-android/11783/2 "2015-01-08T01:04:31Z")

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We don’t have any specific handling of this with FMOD Studio, you would use the normal platform native controls for determining the final mix. The API you are interested in is the AudioSession API, specifically audio session categories.

You can read more about them [here](https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/Audio/Conceptual/AudioSessionProgrammingGuide/AudioSessionBasics/AudioSessionBasics.html).

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### Author: ![buzzrick](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/qa.fmod.com/buzzrick/32/473_2.png) [@buzzrick](https://qa.fmod.com/u/buzzrick)
#### Post date: [January 8, 2015, 8:29pm UTC](https://qa.fmod.com/t/allow-device-music-playback-ios-android/11783/3 "2015-01-08T20:29:10Z")

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> [@](#):
>
> We don’t have any specific handling of this with FMOD Studio, you would use the normal platform native controls for determining the final mix. The API you are interested in is the AudioSession API, specifically audio session categories.
> 
> You can read more about them [here](https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/Audio/Conceptual/AudioSessionProgrammingGuide/AudioSessionBasics/AudioSessionBasics.html).

That’s Perfect, Thanks! I wasn’t sure where to even start looking
