AVAudioPlayer Loses "Playing" Status - ios

Question

I have an AVAudioPlayer that needs to continue in the background.
Audio is set as the background mode in the plist & this runs on launch:
[[UIApplication sharedApplication] beginReceivingRemoteControlEvents];
[[RootController shared].view becomeFirstResponder];
AVAudioSession* session = [AVAudioSession sharedInstance];
[session setDelegate: self];
[session setActive:YES error:nil];
[session setCategory: AVAudioSessionCategoryPlayback error:nil];
- (BOOL)canBecomeFirstResponder { return YES; }
The Problem
Occasionally the AVAudioPlayer gets in this strange state where:
It's playing, but the play icon in the status bar disappears
If I pause then play, the icon shows up for maybe a second, then disappears
Here's the kicker - if I call setCurrentTime while playing, the play icon shows & stays
I've sunk about 20 hours into this & would love any ideas.

Answer 1

Description of the Bug
If you are playing an AVAudioPlayer then you create an AVPlayer, the playing icon will disappear. Apparently AVPlayer immediately takes precedence & since it is not playing yet the play icon disappears from the status bar.
This causes some serious issues:
If the app is in the background, iOS will shut down your AVAudioPlayer within 5 seconds (because it doesn't realize you're playing audio)
The iOS remote shows a play button even though audio is playing
The play icon is not showing in the status bar
The Workaround
First off, if you don't have to use AVPlayer, then don't. I use it because I need to play a remote MP3 without downloading it first. I used to use this AudioStreamer class but gave up because it pops up an alert when the stream becomes disconnected along with a few other bugs that I couldn't fix.
So if you're stuck with AVPlayer, there's only one way to re-connect playing status with your AVAudioPlayer. If you call setCurrentTime on the AVAudioPlayer then it will magically re-associate itself as the current player for the app. So you'll need to call it after any AVPlayer is initialized and anytime you resume playback on your AVAudioPlayer.
I decided to subclass AVAudioPlayer so I could register it in a global list (when it is initialized) and unregister it when it is deallocated. I also overrode the play method so that any calls to resume playback would also call setCurrentTime. Then I subclassed AVPlayer so that any time one is initialized, all active AVAudioPlayers call setCurrentTime on themselves. Last thing - you'll have to call setCurrentTime after a short, maybe 1 second, delay or else it will have no effect.
No kidding, this is the result of nearly 40 hours of troubleshooting.