How to listen to video in the background on iOS devices

I was reading this great post by Federico Viticci (@viticci) today on his MacStories site:

• iPad Air 2 Review: Why the iPad Became My Main Computer

In one section, he addressed some of the current limitations of iOS and I was surprised to see him include the following:

And I could go on, mentioning the inability to listen to a video in the background

I was surprised, because there is a way to listen to video in the background. It's quite straightforward (though there is one complication):

1) Start playing a video in Safari.

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2) Switch to the home screen or to another app. You will notice that that the video stops.

3) Pull up the Control Center interface from the bottom of your iOS screen, and click the play button in the music/video player controls section. That's all!

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I have found that this technique also works in the Vimeo app but not in the YouTube app (even though you can still see the video player controls in Control Center). I wonder if this means that app developers can enable such functionality.