Make my background music player stop? Objective C - ios

Question

I have several views, one of them is an "options" view, in this view there will be a button that will allow the user to click a button to "stop" the background music, or click it to turn it back on. Im pretty sure I have the general idea of how to do this, the problem is, my code isnt working and I am not sure why.
this is the code from the implementation file for the "options" class:
- (IBAction)musicIO:(id)sender {
MenuViewController *myMusicPlayer = [[MenuViewController alloc] init];
[myMusicPlayer backgroundMusicStart];
}
it calls the method in my menu code(a different class)
This is my menu code:
-(IBAction) backgroundMusicStart{
if( i != 1){
NSURL * URL = [NSURL fileURLWithPath:[NSString stringWithFormat:#"%#/backgroundMusic.wav", [[NSBundle mainBundle] resourcePath]]];
NSError *error;
backgroundPlayer = [[AVAudioPlayer alloc] initWithContentsOfURL:URL error:&error];
backgroundPlayer.numberOfLoops = -1;
[backgroundPlayer play];
i = 1;
NSLog(#"In start music");
}
else if ( i == 1 ) {
[backgroundPlayer stop];
i = 0;
NSLog(#"In stop music");
}
}
"i" is a globally declared variable.
The problem with the code:
it runs, NSLog outputs that it gets into both if statements fine, the problem is when it is in the [backgroundPlayer stop] bracket, it doesnt stop the music, and I cant figure out why.

Answer 1

You're initialising backgroundPlayer every time this method is invoked and in only one of the cases. What you should be doing is make backgroundPlayer an instance variable and act on the shared instance of it... Example follows:
// static AVPlayer *backgroundPlayer;
- (IBAction) backgroundMusicStart {
if (backgroundPlayer == nil) {
backgroundPlayer = [[AVAudioPlayer alloc] initWithContentsOfURL:URL error:&error];
backgroundPlayer.numberOfLoops = -1;
}
if (i == 1) { [backgroundPlayer stop]; }
else if (i == 0) { backgroundPlayer play]; }
}