I am writing an audio application which plays media items from the iPod music library using the iPod music player. 

Now I know it is possible for the iPod to carry on playing when it is in the background, but I want to also run either a Thread or a Timer in the background where a selector method periodically checks the state of the music player so that the app can apply rules in order to apply delays between tracks, and automatically load up new media collections into the player all while in the background. 

Is this possible?

If not, is there any other method for achieving this functionality?