Does it still massively suck? I'm at work and can't fiddle with it
Current issues:
Master List Of Issues With XBox Music On WP8 - Microsoft Community
Sorting/Management
- Device only sorts albums by Name, not Date (WP7 devices sorted albums by date). Can we have an on-device option to choose? Any other sort options (i.e. sort by Album Artist) would also be very useful.
- Cannot delete entire folders on phone at once (i.e. delete an entire Album, Artist, etc.) ? can only check off and delete individual songs. WP7 did at least allow for the manual deletion of complete albums, playlists, etc.
Podcasts
- Few, if any options, for Podcast management. Many podcast features stripped from WP7. Syncing Podcasts is difficult and often does not display in Podcasts section, similar to issues syncing with Playlists.
- Not possible to add Podcasts to the Xbox Music+Video hub by RSS url. Used to be able to add to WP7 using the Zune software.
- Podcast playback position forgotten by device when switching to any other app that uses volume control (i.e. YouTube).
- Occasionally volume control in Podcasts ceases to function (though continues to work in other apps that use volume), requiring a device reboot or other odd workarounds.
Metadata
-
"Connect with XBox Music"option in Settings: if ticked on, this option will often completely overwrite existing user-defined metadata (i.e. album name, artist name, artwork, track listing, etc.) with incorrect info, for instance the wrong artist, track names, etc. In some cases it is even splitting albums in multiple parts. There is no option to only fill in missing info, as there was in Zune with WP7.
(
edit: more on this specificly at this thread)
- Even with
"Connect with XBox Music" option ticked, Album/Artist Artwork often does not download where missing, or wrong artwork is downloaded.
- WP8 device does not recognize any metadata for Multiple Discs, Song Ratings, Release Date, etc from existing music collections. Albums with multiple discs display tracks in order of 1,1,2,2,3,3, etc. instead of 1,2,3,1,2,3, etc. WP7 usually correctly recognized all data, and accurately reflected (synced) metadata between device and PC.
WP8 Sync App - "Syncing" functions are very basic - virtually non-existent compared to the rich sync experience in Zune or even iTunes.
- No icon indicating if media is currently on device or not. Have to navigate all the way back to the home screen of the app and click on a whole different subset of folders to see what media is on your device.
- No manual syncing or management of Playlists. Cannot generate auto-playlists, like in Zune.
- No visible folder hierarchy in navigation.
- Very few options to actually manage media library.
WP8 Desktop App
- "Syncing" functions are very basic - virtually non-existent compared to the rich sync experience in Zune or even iTunes.
- Can transfer Playlists, but they show up empty on device.
- Can only transfer at Artist/Album level, not Song level.
- Nothing to indicate what media is already on device or not.
- Software needs to scan entire media library every time it is launched.
- If syncing to micro SD card, there is often a bug displaying multiple instances of the same song, even though there should be only one on the device.
- UI is totally spartan, lacks any sort of helpful options or organizational tools, such as seeing song ratings (or songs for that matter) and only syncing songs with positive ratings. Cannot use this software to manage actual media library on PC, alter metadata, etc.
Subscription
- Cannot transfer subscription content from Zune Pass to WP8 device - understood this is because these two systems use different DRM, however re-downloading previous Zune subscription content through XBox Music is a nightmare. XBox Music downloads incorrect music, including tracks that were never part of user's library. It also downloads doubles of non-subscription DRM-free songs that are already on user's PC, as well as any songs that the user once had in their subscription folder even if they deleted them long ago.
- WP8 devices don't seem to understand the difference between locally stored content and subscription Cloud content in many instances - music player often stutters while searching for Cloud content, even though the content is stored locally on the WP8 device. Other issues include "unable to play" error messages for DRM-free content that should work.
- Cannot rate streaming XBox Music content.
Performance
- Sluggish delay (approx. 2 seconds) when navigating music library, skipping songs, loading songs, etc. on WP8 device.
- Huge lag when using Play Music (shuffle all) button on device (or generally when playing large numbers of tracks) - audio plays after 5-10 seconds, but actual device completely locks up (becomes unresponsive to all touch/hardware input) for 30-60 seconds before regaining responsiveness.
- When shuffling all (or, again, when playing large numbers of tracks), there is a delay (approx. 2 seconds) when skipping tracks.
- Performance issues seem to be made worse when music is stored and read off of expandable memory (making the addition of expandable memory options to WP8 a fairly useless feature). However issues are still present (to a slightly lesser extent) when reading music off of internal device memory.
- Note that NONE of these performance issues existed on WP7, even when playing the same large number of tracks all at once, and/or using the shuffle all function.
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