Reasons Xbox music sucks!

Christopher Lindsay

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Another issue I'm having it's that Xbox music has been stuck on repeat lately. Like I'll pick an album to play but instead it will just keep replaying a single song even though repeat isn't on. It's really weird to have to manually switch to the next song. All these issues so far are on the 1520 with denim update using only the Xbox music app.
 

TechFreak1

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Sorry to deride the thread however this old News.. lol.

Xbox Music has always been not upto par for a native app hence why they used to have a rather fairly quick update to schedule. I say used to as it would best use coding hours to focus on Windows 10 and the app that will ship with that as opposed to solely focusing on updates for Wp8 and Windows 8.x. That is not saying they shouldn't push out updates as that would give the impression to the some people that MS is going to let their core apps languish in the state of limbo like some of the other apps in the app store.

Never the it is slowly getting better.
 

jdballard

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What don't you like about it?

Besides agreeing about the name (it really does imply you need an Xbox), here are a several:

  • When using Bluetooth in my car and I "call Cortana" and then say "Play album 'The Grand Experiment'", it shuffles it. I can't make heads or tails of when it shuffles vs. plays in order. I thought it was related to whether it was in shuffle mode from the previous play, but sometimes I think it just shuffles it because it feels like it. If I use a voice command and say "Play album", play it in order. If I say "Shuffle album", shuffle it.
  • This is new since the OneDrive integration: I have some albums that have duplicate tracks. I've turned on the remove duplicates. For example, the album "Fairweather Johnson" by Hootie & the Blowfish has dupe tracks. The track "Be the One" has no icon next to it and the file shows in my OneDrive folder. The second version of that song has the ((*)) streaming icon next to it and the file properties say "Stream from OneDrive (download to listen offline)." Why are there two and can't it figure it out? As I typed this, I realized I think it's special characters in the band or other attributes that get mapped to a path. The ampersand in Hootie in the BlowFish or the question mark in the album title "What's the Story Morning Glory?". Willing to bet that's it for a lot of my "dupes".
  • When looking at the store under "new albums", it shows singles as new albums. Separate the singles from the albums. Hate getting all excited seeing a new album when it's really just a single.
  • Use Cortana to suggest things I might like.
  • Allow me to create stations/shuffles based on more than one artist (similar to Pandora.)
  • Tag things correctly. Search for KC & the Sunshine Band. Listed as R&B/Soul? I'd call it disco.
  • Make it easier to report incorrect metadata. I had to post that they had two artists named "Zac Brown" under the same band. One is country, the other alternative. Make it easy to report and fix. Another example: search for the band "Slaughter" and watch how it lumps the 80's hard rock band with a rapper.

I'm sure there's more. It honestly seems like the people managing xbox music don't LOVE music.
 

920Walker

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Having never owned an XBOX but dealing with the poor XBOX Music for over two years, why would I spend money on a device who's name has brought nothing but frustration?
 

Christopher Lindsay

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I keep giving it second chances because I really don't want to depend on iTunes but a crap music store almost pushes you to torrent music and that's sad. I purchased an album on Xbox music and my gf purchased the same album. In the Xbox store there was a track completely unnamed. We literally thought the track was called "track 13" until she bought it on iTunes. It would be bad if it was like that only on my phone but it's still like that now in the store.
 

Jazmac

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I wanted to compose a list of reasons Xbox music sucks for a lot of people. For me the Xbox music app sucks first for the name. I didn't use it for a while just because I thought I had to have an Xbox to use it. It has nothing to do with Xbox specifically so it's weird they call it Xbox music. Xbox music app on WP doesn't have any indication at all on what's explicit and what's not. The search function in the app sucks. The indication on whether you're searching the store or collection needs to be better. I've refused to sign up for Xbox music pass because it handles regular purchased music so badly. It never finds new audio files manually added to my 1520 but Xbox video seems to want to display every video file on my phone no matter where I hide it. It marks my owned audio as streaming for no reason so I lose access to them. It shuffles the same instead of randomly each time. It will still play music if you close out the app and will not stop until you press stop. It doesn't playback while using the phone function like iPhones. It doesn't even properly sort purchases find through the Xbox music app. I have some artist in the Xbox music folder and others just downloaded in other places. It doesn't have any feedback options in the settings to even send issues for correcting. If you have windows 7 you have no option at all for using it. It's really not advertised or functions as a proper central hub for your device the way iTunes does. That's a few things from me. Who has more? What don't you like about it?

So use Itunes.
marlon-brando.gif
 

Yazen

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At least WP users have a seekbar (and OneDrive integration)! Android users can't rewind or fast forward! In 2015!

And shouldn't we be able to edit metadata with Xbox Music?
Android 1.6 had seeking

Pretty much every entry level device that can play music supports gapless playback. Xbox Music? Nope :(
Windows XP had this feature when it shipped lol. XP can edit metadata too..
Doing anything useful in Xbox Music is a pain.
 

Crakeur

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Besides agreeing about the name (it really does imply you need an Xbox), here are a several:

  • For example, the album "Fairweather Johnson" by Hootie & the Blowfish has dupe tracks. .


You can't blame Xbox for your having Hootie & the Blowfish. That's issue is on you my friend. (I kid)


I can live with the duplicate tracks, although I do think that's not as bad as it was. My one major problem is that the damned thing stops playing songs on its own which means I have to take the phone out and restart the shuffle. Sometimes it happens 10 times in a half hour, sometimes it doesn't happen at all. I know it's tied to licensing which is very strange since all the songs that I've downloaded are either purchased from Xbox (10 free a month deal), downloaded with licenses attached or ripped from cds. I can never figure out which songs trigger this and the system doesn't show me which songs won't play so I can delete or re-download them.

Is it a deal breaker? No but it's frustrating as all hell.

 

jdballard

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You can't blame Xbox for your having Hootie & the Blowfish. That's issue is on you my friend. (I kid)

Ha ha! I even have Darius Rucker's country stuff and am looking forward to his new release next week. :)

I can live with the duplicate tracks, although I do think that's not as bad as it was.
It's better than it was. One thing I learned by testing yesterday: if you have a dupe, one showing a file path to your OneDrive file and one that says "stream from OneDrive" and you select "Delete" on the one showing streaming from OneDrive, the warning about deleting the file from OneDrive is legit. It will delete it. It's weird it doesn't recognize it as a dupe until you delete it - then it deletes both.

My one major problem is that the damned thing stops playing songs on its own which means I have to take the phone out and restart the shuffle.

Fortunately, never had this happen at all.

Is it a deal breaker? No but it's frustrating as all hell.

I'm a software developer. These things I can deal with. Your average user? No way.
 

Pierre Blackwell

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I wanted to compose a list of reasons Xbox music sucks for a lot of people. For me the Xbox music app sucks first for the name. I didn't use it for a while just because I thought I had to have an Xbox to use it. It has nothing to do with Xbox specifically so it's weird they call it Xbox music. Xbox music app on WP doesn't have any indication at all on what's explicit and what's not. The search function in the app sucks. The indication on whether you're searching the store or collection needs to be better. I've refused to sign up for Xbox music pass because it handles regular purchased music so badly. It never finds new audio files manually added to my 1520 but Xbox video seems to want to display every video file on my phone no matter where I hide it. It marks my owned audio as streaming for no reason so I lose access to them. It shuffles the same instead of randomly each time. It will still play music if you close out the app and will not stop until you press stop. It doesn't playback while using the phone function like iPhones. It doesn't even properly sort purchases find through the Xbox music app. I have some artist in the Xbox music folder and others just downloaded in other places. It doesn't have any feedback options in the settings to even send issues for correcting. If you have windows 7 you have no option at all for using it. It's really not advertised or functions as a proper central hub for your device the way iTunes does. That's a few things from me. Who has more? What don't you like about it?
I think people need to educate themselves first. MSFT made mention of the transition from Zune to Xbox for Music and Video shortly after Windows 8 was released. The concept was to integrate a music playing experience across multiple platforms which I'd say they accomplished. Now I think we all remember the growing pains in the beginning but MSFT has done a good job in steadily pushing out updates and the program is running as smooth as ever.
You can download playlists. I've downloaded two of them. If you look at the album art, in a lot of cases they'll have an explicit and then an album art picture without the explicit tag. I like the other features like related artists and history. This isn't a standalone media player. It was never meant to be. For what Xbox music is designed for it does a great job. If you're heavily immersed in the music pass which I have been for almost six years now then it works for you, however I also use MixRadio, and Mixtapes. Xbox music doesn't do some of what the other players do, but it doesn't suck.
 

Crakeur

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I'm a software developer. These things I can deal with. Your average user? No way.

I'm an average user and the play stoppage hasn't forced me to consider alternatives yet, but, this past winter, in sub-zero weather, having to bust out the phone in frigid winds, was a real test of my patience.

I uploaded stuff to OneDrive that was on my PC but I did too many files at once, then I was told I couldn't upload more than one song at a time, so I gave up. I have several thousand songs on the pc, from years of collecting them, and to have to upload them, one at a time, is just ridiculous. More so since, up until recently, I put songs directly onto my device to avoid stoppage thanks to lost connections. Here in NYC, if I take the subway, or go thru certain areas, I lose cell service, and the streaming goes with it.

Enjoy the big Hootie release party.
 

Christopher Lindsay

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I'm an average user and the play stoppage hasn't forced me to consider alternatives yet, but, this past winter, in sub-zero weather, having to bust out the phone in frigid winds, was a real test of my patience.

I uploaded stuff to OneDrive that was on my PC but I did too many files at once, then I was told I couldn't upload more than one song at a time, so I gave up. I have several thousand songs on the pc, from years of collecting them, and to have to upload them, one at a time, is just ridiculous. More so since, up until recently, I put songs directly onto my device to avoid stoppage thanks to lost connections. Here in NYC, if I take the subway, or go thru certain areas, I lose cell service, and the streaming goes with it.

Enjoy the big Hootie release party.


I have so many songs that I own that don't work in my Xbox music app it's ridiculous. Maybe because I didn't load them one at a time. Almost half my library is unavailable to me. I always end up using the file app to play my music.
 

Machiventa777

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Another thing that sucks about it is on Win7 using music.xbox.com you can't delete multiple albums from your collection!

And another thing that pisses me off (again on W7 web client) is when browsing either your collection, playlists, or the music pass catalog, it takes several seconds to load, which essentially takes forever to view results, especially long lists. And if you accidentally click an item (or on purpose), when you go back it starts loading results from the beginning. Ugh!
 

Jazmac

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Another thing that sucks about it is on Win7 using music.xbox.com you can't delete multiple albums from your collection!

And another thing that pisses me off (again on W7 web client) is when browsing either your collection, playlists, or the music pass catalog, it takes several seconds to load, which essentially takes forever to view results, especially long lists. And if you accidentally click an item (or on purpose), when you go back it starts loading results from the beginning. Ugh!

Never noticed that before but what I noticed from a lot of these I hate XBOX music posts is that not everyone uses the utility in the same way. Moreover, depending on the types of music you listen to may affect your appreciation of XBOX music. Maybe my opinion will change in time since I've only own Xbox music for a couple weeks and I'm still learning my way around but I find the more I use it, the more I like it. And now that it reads my stored music on OneDrive, I can't be happier. As a Jazz lover, I am actually surprised at just how good XBOX music is at finding the types of Jazz I enjoy. So far, I'm happy.
 

Shobin Drogan

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I also have a problem with Xbox music, everytime i copy a podcast onto my phone, it doesnt show up on the list.
I have to enter my files app and then look for the podcast to open it, which is terrible because its basically a greyed out interface with no album art or any functions at all, and if you hit back it stops playing. Annoying @#?*
I tried to restart my phone and even force it to scan sd card and it still doesn't do a single thing.
 

Crakeur

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with the addition of the onedrive storage, I'm finding it takes a very long time for the first song to play when you hit the shuffle play button. the first song takes minutes to load, if it loads at all.


 

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