Syncing to the cloud

[rtotheich]

Hello all!

I'm a seasoned Windows Phone veteran and usually get by just fine, if not with the help of forums and blogs (like this one). I was interested in the Xbox Music service and then thought over the price and the whole 'sign up then quit last minute' thing and realized it wasn't worth it for me. I'm running Windows 7. Then I started reading the fine print and remembered that you can stream your own music through Xbox Music in the cloud.

Immediately after I made this realization, I realized I didn't know how to go about beginning this process...Where do you put your music "in the cloud"? Should it be under a "music" folder in Skydrive? I opened up the music tab on my phone and to my surprise, there were about 20 of my songs already listed with a little streaming icon next to them ((.)), you know the one. Then I looked at the menu at the top where it says 'all', clicked it and saw the list of sources. I chose to show only 'cloud collection' and the same songs showed up so I know that these songs SOMEHOW are in fact in the cloud, but I have no idea how they got there.

I searched the Xbox site and even the how-to pages (which I've never looked at previously). I am 100% sure that I managed to get about 15 songs uploaded to an online location (and I don't know where it is). I'd like to continue uploading the rest of my stuff so I can just stream music without ever worrying about syncing it to my phone, etc. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

 

[spyderzWPC]

I found these songs came from my windows collection, I believe they came through xbox/zune music on my computer. I am still trying to make it work well with the cloud tunes.

 

[Scorpio5x0]

One mistake I made when I updated to Windows 8 and started using XBox music, without realizing it, was I wasnt allowing XBox music to have a chance to actually match the music and put it in the cloud. When I had the XBox music app running for awhile I realized my songs slowly started to appear with the cloud icon. This process appears to run in the background while the app is running.

 

[gsquared]

I have embarked on converting my music collection to the format Xbox Music expects to see within the Win 8 Library. My goal is to only keep DRM'ed music I listen to frequently on my phone while having access to the entire collection via streaming. Most of my music already resides on an 80 GB IPod that I use in my car. I can still stream via BT which I use frequently.

I spent a long time yesterday and only got to "N". As crazy as this sounds (and is) that the best way I've found is to add each album a folder at a time. There are some things that you cannot add such as various artist compilations. It adds too many album / artist entries. When I first added the "My Music" folder it was a total mess.

Though this is very time consuming I'm hoping this to be a one-time effort so I will be straight going forward. I currently do not have the Cloud Sync turned on for my PC / Tablet / Phone. Will test once I'm done.

 

[gsquared]

Big Update.

Was able to get my existing cloud collection deleted. This was creating a problem on my phone. I was lucky that I have a tablet without any music on it. I fired up Xbox Music and all of the garbage from the existing cloud collection showed up. I was able to delete these entries. Now the only music showing on my phone with the "Xbox Music cloud collection" turned on is the albums I have download to the device via PC Sync.

 

[Duvi]

I installed W8 on a new SSD and never connected my hard drive with the music. When I do, I eventually went them to sync and also have them organized. Right now, it's a cluster-****.

 

[rtotheich]

The thing is I don't have Windows 8. I have Windows 7 and I'd think it's a stupid thing to force people to update for a single feature like this. There's no reason it shouldn't work on Windows 7. Anyone figure out a way to get music to the cloud WITHOUT windows 8?

 

[gsquared]

Update 12/2/2012:

My first attempt has failed. Ran into a nasty little thing left over from Win7. Apparently you can only add 50 locations to and Library item. Never ran Win7 and didn't know about that limitation.

My next attempt will be to cleanup the My Music folder to only include full albums then add the single location and see how Xbox sorts it out.

 

[Spongers8X]

gsquared, why would you add more than 50 locations to the Library in the first place? I have my entire music library (which is on a network drive) in my Music library on my Win7 machine at home. It has over 14GB of music in it, and over 600 artists. Not sure why you are reaching the 50 location limit, but mine is working fine as a single location.

 

[gsquared]

Mine is not.

 

[tgallipeau]

Can I ask what location you are putting your files into that are syncing into the cloud?

• I have added another drive to my Windows 8 computer (E: drive)
• In My Music I set that drive as the default save location
• I have a folder called Xbox Music I believe this where all the music that I download from the store is saved to, this music syncs from the cloud to my phone
• I then created a new folder in My Music called iTunes (I know terrible name just wanted to see if it would sync to the cloud) and copied some of my music into it

This configuration does not work, does my own content need to be in the Xbox Music folder? I would like to keep them separate if possible.

 

[gsquared]

I also use E:\My Music. I keep my .mp3's and .wma files separate subfolder (Xbox Music). There seems to be no issue doing that. The problem I'm having is when I link the E:\My Music as a library the Xbox Music app does not recognize many of my albums. I have about 798 songs that are classified under unknown artist. They are all .mp3's that I've had for a while. I have retagged every album with Mpetag (thanks to whoever recommended it on this board). That helped as I previously had 1500+ songs labeled under unknown artist. Pretty much at a loss on how to proceed. I've went back and retagged these and Xbox Music still cannot classify them correctly.

 

[Dadstar0410]

What special privilege do Zune Pass members (Xbox Music members) get on WP8? Do we get unlimited streaming? And I am having the same problem on my 8X. I have thousands of songs in my collection on my home computer, but on my Surface and 8X, only about 300 show up. This is a big deal for me because most of those songs are my sister's or brother's which I don't listen to.

 

[gsquared]

Can I ask what location you are putting your files into that are syncing into the cloud?

• I have added another drive to my Windows 8 computer (E: drive)
• In My Music I set that drive as the default save location
• I have a folder called Xbox Music I believe this where all the music that I download from the store is saved to, this music syncs from the cloud to my phone
• I then created a new folder in My Music called iTunes (I know terrible name just wanted to see if it would sync to the cloud) and copied some of my music into it

This configuration does not work, does my own content need to be in the Xbox Music folder? I would like to keep them separate if possible.

After reading your post again I think I can give a better answer. Your music doesn't really sync to a cloud. MS is working on that via Skydrive. Instead I believe Xbox Music creates an index file of the music you have and pulls the same album from their music collection. If you have an album that is not in their music collection your not going to see it on another device.

 

[rtotheich]

Here's the dealio:

If you had downloaded zunepass content when you had a zune pass, that content will appear as part of your cloud collection. That's what those few songs were. The only way I got my music to sync to cloud was installing a release preview of W8 as a Virtual machine and using that fake OS to store my music in a folder, then slowly wait for it to match :grin: Skydrive syncing is coming soon, so don't fret folks!