How do I keep Android from killing apps playing audio in the background?

[Kchrpm]

I am sick of having Threes and iHeartRadio/BeyondPod open, but iHR and BeyondPod get consistently closed while in the background (presumably because of memory issues). It's even worse when it's Maps and BeyondPod, and then Maps closes in the background or with the screen off, with no warning, so navigation is gone.

What can I do with normal tools, not root or the like, to just force one or two apps to stay open. Or do I need to go into settings, force close stuff a bunch of stuff and hope that they don't re-open themselves and kill the stuff I actually care about?

Device is an Xperia Z1S, but I had the same problem on my previous Galaxy Nexus, and I don't want to just keep chasing RAM in a new device in hopes that it fixes itself.

 

[Rukbat]

Android can kill any app any time it needs the RAM. It normally closes the least recently used app, and if an app has been playing music for half an hour while you've been doing other things, that's probably the least recently used (meaning you interacted with it) app.

Bring the app to the foreground every 5 minutes and do something - even change the volume just a bit - and it goes to the head of the list.

 

[Kchrpm]

I don't think that will help, unfortunately. I can open the app, start the music/podcast, then go to the game or navigation and it will cut itself off within 30 seconds. I have gone back to start the music/podcast, and then navigation closes in the background.

It does seem to help if I close active apps first (easy to do with Sony's skin), but even that works less than half the time.