Is anybody still interested to know how Xbox Music works, and doesn't work? Has everybody dropped it like a rock? Good, because this is going to be long winded and complicated and I've had just enough Crown to feel motivated. I recently got my Vaio with win8. Needed full win8 device as RT storage indexing has been a nightmare. I sat down with 920, Vaio and RT and tried to figure the ins and outs of XBOX Music. It is now a four letter word in my book. And if anything I post is not correct, I apologize. It was the best guess I could come up with.
First thing you have to do is have an MS/Xbox account attached to all your devices and a PAID subscription to Xbox Music. Without paid subscription, only local music works. Also need to check your xbox music account to see that all of your devices are listed. In any device, phone, tablet or laptop, you can go to settings and get your account sorted out. It may take 24hrs to update your devices if you add or remove. Also, side note, if you roll over from trial period to paid subscription, its probably a billing issue, but some people have had a lapse in services. Anywhere from a day to a week from what I have read. It may be sorted out at this point, but be aware if you have issues using services around the time your trial ends. I have not had any problems since. If your device isn't listed on your account, you will only have access to locally stored music. Another side note, if you setup your computer using a "local account" I'm not sure if Xbox music on win8 will work. I assume you can just sign in in the app but I set up computer under my MS account. If you can't get service on your laptop, may check into this. Now that account is set up, it gets complicated.
Next, we need to go over a couple of symbols. They are: no symbol, broadcasting antenna, like the one you see on your phone when internet sharing is turned on, and cloud symbol. They tell you the state of that particular song or album on that particular device. I may not be completely right my descriptions so chime in if you notice other peculiarities. You will see these symbols in different areas from phone to tablet/laptop config. Also, if you press and hold on touchscreen or hover with cursor, it gives a brief dialogue of what it means. Except no symbol.
NO SYMBOL: This is your locally stored music. You purchased and loaded on that device. I don't exactly know how this is different from cloud other than maybe it hasn't been uploaded to cloud storage or there are some licensing issues with certain artists. It may be like initial loading of Skydrive, it only loads so much during any session. I have no idea. SIDE NOTE: But for my situation, that isn't entirely correct. I had reset my RT last week. My cloud storage came back but I didn't have all my music loaded on RT. I got Vaio last night and loaded all my music. I then had both RT and Vaio up and running Xbox music. It downloaded and uploaded all of my music between devices and I saw both devices stabilize at same number of albums, artists and songs, give or take a couple. What's strange is some of my music was downloaded to RT with no symbol and some got the cloud symbol, which I will explain next. No symbol kind of has me stumped. Another hypothesis which I didn't test is if you load and artist on all of your devices, it doesn't need to store in cloud because it is present on all devices. I will have to try this with some new purchased music.
CLOUD: If you touch and hold or hover over this icon it will bring up a dialog with description except on phone. (Matched: available here and in the Xbox music cloud for streaming to other devices) Pretty straight forward. This music is on cloud and locally stored on device for offline listening. Which means you should NOT get error code when offline. I don't anyway. Now here is where it gets complicated, at least for my OCD. Example: If I download music from Xbox music to my RT, it will show up on my phone with the antenna symbol which is streaming only. Basically, my entire library IS available on all devices, but you have to manually download to all three devices to have offline availability on that device. Is it looking like a pain to keep up with now or what? Suggestion: If you are going to get music from Xbox, search and download it to your phone and let your Wifi only devices stream music or download to all. Might save you some data when you have some playlists set up and can't remember every song you have on cloud.
BROADCASTING ANTENNA: You can touch and hold or hover with cursor for dialog. (Streaming only. download here for offline listening) Pretty straight forward. It will only play with internet access. You will get error code every time and it will not play. You have downloaded this song on one of your devices, but not this device. You can download it on a device and antenna symbol will turn into a cloud and you will have offline access, as long as the bill is paid.
So, think of the cloud as a hub and your devices do technically sync to it, but not entirely all the time exactly how you think they should. Also, I think this is why some people are complaining of 2,3,4 of the same albums/songs ending up on their devices. MS doesn't have the ability to play your music. When they sync to cloud for your other devices to use, they technically are finding your song or a version of your song to put in the cloud for the other devices. Remember, you have a license to play song, you don't own the song. I think if something is different in meta data or whatever causes the discrepancy, you end up with multiple of same. I saw a few instances on my stuff. May be something else to it. Not entirely sure.
This by no means is entirely correct and I still have questions on a few things myself. And feel free to add to it. I hope to find a few of my unanswered questions and I will post if I find anything else. And no, it won't be this long winded, I hope. Good luck.
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