Recipe: Using the MPMusicPlayerController

Cocoa Touch includes a simple-to-use music player class that works seamlessly with media collections. Despite what its name implies, the MPMusicPlayerController class is not a view controller. It provides no onscreen elements for playing back music. Instead, it offers an abstract controller that handles playing and pausing music.

It publishes optional notifications when its playback state changes. The class offers two shared instances: the iPodMusicPlayer and an applicationMusicPlayer. Always use the former. It provides reliable state change feedback, which you will want to catch programmatically.

Initialize the player controller by calling setQueueWithItemCollection: with an MPMediaItemCollection.