[T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy S 4] VHAHONGRANTC:
Hey Folks,

I have an issue with the built-in stock Music player constantly taking all of the available RAM, which causes Android to start killing other processes like the launcher (Apex Pro), Tasker, nearby devices service (force closes occasionally), etc. It is very odd. I have tried several attempts to remedy the situation. I have, so far, cleared the Media Storage data, cleared the Cache partition from the boot recovery menu, have music on built-in storage and un-mounting my MicroSD card, to which none of these efforts helped. It seems like the Music Player app has a memory leak, which I am wondering if this was introduced in 4.3. I did not see it listed yet in the 4.3 issue threads, and not really sure if 4.3 is the culprit. I upgraded to the S4 from an S2 recently and a week later the official 4.3 upgrade was available. Thus, I do not know if this issue was happening in 4.2.2.

The interesting thing is that this leak or loop is occurring whether or not I have music on the device. So, to be clear, the issue specifically is when I launch the Music Player and then go to Task Manager to see the used RAM, the RAM will just continue to get used up until it reaches about 1.70GB or so out of 1.78GB available and then Android will start killing other processes to accommodate for more memory. This is when Apex and /or Tasker and other services start getting the ax. What's more, if I kill the Music Player (either right away or later), the memory continues to be consumed until it reaches about 1.5GB - 1.6GB and then finally releases and drops to 700MB - 900MB.

I am on a stock ROM, non-rooted and I have also confirmed this issue with my wife's S4 as well. We can use Google Play Music with no issues, but prefer the stock player if there is a solution to this "memory leak" or other situation that is causing the issue. If anyone has some insights as to what this issue is and a fix, please let me know. Also, if anyone can launch the Music Player and watch the RAM in Task Manager to confirm that this is or is not occurring on other S4s out there as perhaps it is an issue that some may not have noticed. In fact, my wife has been using her device in the car for a couple of weeks and streaming with Bluetooth and not noticed this was occurring. However, if she were to have music and use Maps/Navigation at the same time with this issue, Maps will get killed along with other multitasking tasks. I happened to noticed this behavior when I moved my music on the device and was playing around with the player, when I saw that Tasker restarted itself and then shortly after the nearby devices service forced closed and the music app got real sluggish. I then started observing the RAM usage with the launch of the player and realized why apps were closing. The funny part is that the music plays fine and never dies, it just kills everything else in its wake. :D

Any insight to this will be greatly appreciated. Also, I have been scouring the forums and Google in general to see if this has been mentioned and have not found this exact situation. However, if I did overlook a thread/post that has this as a known issue, please let me know what that link is. Thanks. :)