Comment 3 for bug 1544543

To clarify, “indicator-sound can simply hide itself” should be “indicator-sound can simply omit the playback section of the menu”. The rest of the menu should still be present.

I doubt that’s a good solution, though, for two reasons. First, if a system component pretends to be an app, that pseudo-app will keep appearing confusingly in places we don’t expect: trust prompts, storage consumption UI, network activity UI, etc. Needing to hide it in every place it might appear is just asking for bugs.

Second, it would mean there are no playback controls in many cases where people would expect them.

The player should be whichever app the user sees as being responsible for the playback. So in the case of Media Hub, the player is whichever app sent the stream to Media Hub.

Here’s a perfectly reasonable but probably-difficult-to-implement test case:
1. Send a message to a Gmail address, containing a link to a YouTube music video.
2. In the Gmail app, open the message.
3. Start playing the video.
4. Switch to another app.
5. Open the sound menu.

What you should see: “Gmail” with playback controls.

What you currently see: “Media Player” with no playback controls.