Android HTML5 audio distorts when backgrounded

[dremex]

Hey there!

I have a simple Vue3 app that uses an HTML5 audio tag. Playback works great on Android until I lock my device or open a different app and then the audio becomes choppy. If I bring the app into the foreground, playback resumes as normal.

If I open the Vue app with the device browser (Chrome) and then repeat the same steps, playback continues as expected. One difference is the notification bar media controls are visible using Chrome and not when using the native app.

I'm guessing Chrome is hooking into the native Android media APIs which allows background playback.

Does anyone know if it's possible for me to tell Android to allow the app to play in the background or should I look into using a native audio plugin and see if I get better results?

Thanks!