Pause on screen lock makes totem unusable as music player on mobile
It seems that totem intentionally (since no other audio player does this) pauses playback when the screen is locked.
However, this behavior is quite unsuitable for a few scenarios: on a laptop in a party setting when wanting to play some music but then not leaving the UI accessible for all guests walking by, one would want to lock the screen while playing - which then just pauses the music again. And then on a smartphone like the PinePhone or Librem 5, for which totem is otherwise exceptionally suited since it has a nice simple and touch-friendly UI, I reckon one of the most common mobile usage scenarios is to start a music piece or podcast and then at some point lock the screen during a commute when walking around while continuing to listen, which is also made impossible by this behavior.
The only positive I'm seeing is some people may be too lazy to do pause music and then lock screen in two separate steps if they want to do both. Is this really worth all the issues in the scenarios above? Whom is this behavior even for? I would suggest it would be better to just abandon this and let playback continue when the screen is locked, as it does for every other media player on Linux I have ever tried.