I was unable to find any decent information on the net for this long going problem other than:
1. Leave your screen on all day while listening (ridiculous, but it does work FWIW)
or
2. If you are a rooter, then root the phone and get an app that will let you overclock your CPU while the phone is asleep.
The theory seems to be that the problem is that the CPU slows down too much in sleep to consistently push the BT.
I'm not a rooter and the screen fix is unacceptable to me so.....
This is how I fixed the problem:
I thought I would look for an app that would continuously prod at the CPU by running to keep it from deep sleep, yet not pull too much battery drain.
I already had an app on my phone called simply "Stopwatch & Timer" by Jupiter Apps.
It can be downloaded from Play for free
Download it
Install
Open
Use the timer feature
Set the timer to about the amount of time you will be using BT audio or as long as you want (the max is 9 hrs and 59 minutes on the free version)
You can set the alert of your choice when the countdown is complete or choose no alert, whatever works best for you.
Start the countdown, play some tunes and enjoy skip free music for the duration of the timer, all while saving your beautiful screen from burnout.
If the timer runs out it takes about 2 seconds to start it again from the task bar. You can repeat the old timer or make a new timer for a different amount of time. I'm currently keeping mine around 5 hours and will tweak as I go along....it is easy to change the times.
I haven't been using this fix long enough to determine just how much battery the timer uses but one would think it would be much, much, less than leaving your screen on all bloody day, right?
Disclaimer: This was done on a my GS5 and works perfectly. The problem is so similar across so many Galaxy devices that I can't imagine this so called 'fix' not working almost all the same devices. What would be nice though, is a REAL FRIGGIN' FIX, but obviously that is not gonna come so I guess a crumb is better than hungry.
NOTE: I thought this might be obvious, but just in case, you do not have to stay in the "timer screen". Once you got the timer rolling, just hit the middle button at the bottom of the phone and the timer will just have a little icon at the top of the task bar/notification bar and are free to proceed with doing whatever you normally do the rest of the day.