“dwindle down with interruptions” means it started to stutter? If so, most likely you were experiencing the signs of what is called a spontaneous reboot, but you probably preempted it by restarting the Atom manually. A screen freeze sometimes occurs as well (shows a previously played album) It is a known issue with current firmware and will hopefully be addressed by an upcoming firmware update to version 3.6 that is currently in testing.
See these threads: