Comment 2 for bug 136604

TJ:
I disagree that it would be hard because my understanding is that both rhythmbox and gnome-power-manager can both use dbus to talk to each other (in fact only rhythmbox has to do the talking). This puts and end to to any gconf messing around and means if rhythmbox should die unexpectedly then your computer will still suspend (it's similar argument to the way that totem postpones the screensaver when it is playing video).

I actually set one of my desktops to autosuspend because it just saves so much power. When you consider that a typical modern desktop chews up 41W when idle versus 4-5W when doing suspend to RAM the difference is significant.

If writing a patch will guarantee this feature's inclusion in Gutsy then let me know and I'll try and bash something out tomorrow.