Let's pretend for a second that you're right and that there's about 10,000 people who want background streaming, that's 0.01% of the total number of estimated worldwide users (75 million) on the iTunes platform. A percentage that small is too small for me to be "violently wrong". I suspect that 80% of users have never even heard of Pandora on or off the iPhone.

Curious, I went to the iTunes app page for Pandora: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pandora-radio/id284035177

Two points:

1. See that "/us/" in the URL? The Pandora Radio app is ONLY available in the U.S. This is confirmed when I went to the "Pandora Media, Inc. Web Site" link:

"We are deeply, deeply sorry to say that due to licensing constraints, we can no longer allow access to Pandora for listeners located outside of the U.S. We will continue to work diligently to realize the vision of a truly global Pandora, but for the time being we are required to restrict its use. We are very sad to have to do this, but there is no other alternative."

So, off the top, only about 50% - 55% of all iPhone OS users can care about background streaming with Pandora due to the geographic limitations involved. (Call it about 41 million possible users.) We're still only up to 0.03% of possible users if we use your number.

2. Fortunately, we've got better numbers available on that same page. At the time that I looked at it, there were 48,998 ratings for the current version and 361,593 ratings for all versions. Only three ratings/reviews are shown (a 1-star with a rant about medialets and people who complain about the lack of backgrounding; two five star that make no mention of backgrounding). Let's pretend, though, that all 361,593 ratings complain about backgrounding (despite clear evidence that they don't). When we do a quick number crunch we're still only at 0.9% of possible users talk about this and about 0.5% of worldwide users.

We could double or even quadruple the percentages that I've calculated here for alternatives to Pandora (like last.fm), and I'd still be right that the need to run streaming audio programs in the background is a mark of a highly atypical iPhone OS user. Objectively, I am not wrong about this. Your quick parenthetical survey is also asking atypical users what their opinion is. I stand by my statement that my needs aren't typical and the need for backgrounded streaming audio is, for now, even less typical.

From a UI/UX perspective, the management of backgrounded audio streaming applications is something that isn't easy. How do you stop it? How do you start it again once stopped, or do you have to visit the streaming application again? Do you conflate it with the iTunes double-home-tap? If the streaming app is stopped and iTunes isn't playing something, what should double-home-tap do?

There are apps (mostly games) out there that can detect if you're playing music in iPod; if you are, they mute their own music (and sometimes their sound effects); other times, they pause your iPod player to play their audio—and they may restart your iPod audio afterwards. How does a background audio app interact with this in such a way that doesn't require changes to these existing software titles? Should streaming apps be able to hook into iPod media play capabilities?

Every single one of these questions has to be answered—and more—and it needs to be done with as little negative impact on existing software as possible.

I'd like to see all of this happen, but don't delude yourself about your typicality in the population of iPhone OS device users.