Holy crap, syncing with WP8 is a trainwreck.

[Loiselle]

How are you syncing your music to the phone?

I'm also meticulous when it comes to tagging & disabled the xbox music option on the phone but everything I've tried to get music onto the phone has either not worked or creates duplicates of every track.

Any help would be appreciated.

I simply used the drag & drop option. I don't sync my entire collection, only my favorite artists. There is roughly 10GB of music loaded. So, after the phone takes what it takes, my music, apps and other... I have 14.96GB free out of the initial 32 (which formats down to 27 or 28 I believe.

 

[AZBrowncoat]

Well I've solved my sync issues for now. I'm on Windows 7 and use the Zune pass and have a 920. The two devices basically are incompatible. It's as if they're made by two different companies...so, I've decided to continue to use my Lumia 900 to listen to music. 90% of what I listen to is in my car, so I'm just going to leave my 900 in the car and continue to use that. Thanks Microsoft, you really f'ed this up.

The Zune software "experience" is why I've continued to use iTunes for all these years despite it's lockups and crashes...for the most part iTunes just works. I have a 1st Gen iPod Touch that I use as a dedicated player in my truck (which works well for me so I'd say that's a good use of your Lumia 900 IMHO).

My previous experiences with the Zune software and my archaic Zune 30 is one of the reasons I have no intention initially of using the Lumia 920 I've ordered for music or podcasts at all...for that I'm going to continue using my iPhone 4 (re-purposed for all intents and purposes as an iPod).

 

[thirdsun]

I seem to have found a workaround. Browse the device and go to the hidden Album folder inside /Music. For split albums you should 2 ser files, delete the bad one. I think I had to sync again after that (Mac user here).....but after that all songs stayed in the clean album on the device. Let me know if this works for you.

 

[Darkgift]

I'm gonna miss the Zune software for my phone. I can't believe it's not compatible with WP8. That seems to be a ball dropper. It's pretty weird Windows products needs iTunes to sync (from what I'm reading). I still use my Zune HD for most of music listening, but I like to keep some stuff on my phone for when I'm not by my Zune. They should just rebrand the Zune software as XBox Music, and move on.

 

[martinmc78]

I'm able to follow the first part of your post but I see no way to flick to already in collection. I see the list of songs that say "in collection, buy" below each track. flicking to the left shows a "review" of the album.

Any more possible insight?

M>

Sorry maybe using flick was the wrong term to use on a touchscreen device. My bad. What i meant was when you go to the more in store and the album comes up it will say "download" very briefly then change to "in collection" then when you hit the back arrow to go into xbox music player the album should play without the DRM error.

 

[rockstarzzz]

This is hilarious. I remember threads and tons of them complaining about how crap and restrictive Zune software was and why we can't have drag and drop. MSFT gave drag and drop and burnt that Zune down. Now we have people missing that software more than those happy with drag and drop. I feel for ya MSFT! ;-)

btw, got my phone last night. Took me 4 minutes 12 seconds in total from plugging my phone, opening WP app on W8 and getting 650 DRM'd Xbox Music songs on my Lumia 920 and 302 photos from my old Titan onto Lumia, using WP app on W8.

So, I am yet to face this frustration you guys have been talking about.

 

[majortom1981]

This might sound weird but if you have access to a mac use iTunes on the mac and the mac windows phone software. I was surprised that it works a lot better on the mac then it does on windows 7 or windows 8.

I ended up using the mac software to get all my iTunes somngs and playlists to the phone then use windows media player to sync up the rest to the 920.

 

[jwinch2]

I was able to get everything synced via drag and drop on the desktop. It did work fairly well but with the need to convert files from Mp4a format to WMA format, it took a very long time, as in most of a day, to get it done. As of now, it does seem to be synced up properly.

 

[hunterpredd]

This is hilarious. I remember threads and tons of them complaining about how crap and restrictive Zune software was and why we can't have drag and drop. MSFT gave drag and drop and burnt that Zune down. Now we have people missing that software more than those happy with drag and drop. I feel for ya MSFT! ;-)

btw, got my phone last night. Took me 4 minutes 12 seconds in total from plugging my phone, opening WP app on W8 and getting 650 DRM'd Xbox Music songs on my Lumia 920 and 302 photos from my old Titan onto Lumia, using WP app on W8.

So, I am yet to face this frustration you guys have been talking about.

Let me guess... You are using windows 8 on your pc? The sync app on windows 8 works w/ the DRM issue. The issue is using their horrible windows phone app on a windows 7 machine.

 

[vedichymn]

This is hilarious. I remember threads and tons of them complaining about how crap and restrictive Zune software was and why we can't have drag and drop. MSFT gave drag and drop and burnt that Zune down. Now we have people missing that software more than those happy with drag and drop. I feel for ya MSFT! ;-)

btw, got my phone last night. Took me 4 minutes 12 seconds in total from plugging my phone, opening WP app on W8 and getting 650 DRM'd Xbox Music songs on my Lumia 920 and 302 photos from my old Titan onto Lumia, using WP app on W8.

So, I am yet to face this frustration you guys have been talking about.

Yeah, I never wanted drag and drop, Zune worked great for me, just seems like Microsoft really dropped the ball for anyone who doesn't want to manually manage stuff on their phone.

 

[AZBrowncoat]

This might sound weird but if you have access to a mac use iTunes on the mac and the mac windows phone software. I was surprised that it works a lot better on the mac then it does on windows 7 or windows 8.

I ended up using the mac software to get all my iTunes somngs and playlists to the phone then use windows media player to sync up the rest to the 920.

May have to try this using my Mac Mini

 

[badMojo69]

Try a doing it with a Xbox movie...oh wait you can't.

FACE PALM

 

[elibohnert]

I feel as if Xbox music is a train wreck also. I was just trying to get all my music tagged correctly and it find these odds songs with only the same name and renames the whole almost into some random song. #1 reason I'm sticking with a iPhone and not a Windows Phone 8 for now. I really had high hoes for Xbox Music. But I find Zune was 10000000% better.

 

[vedichymn]

I did get some stuff (podcasts) transferred down with the desktop tool, but even then, it's not really "syncing" anything as far as I can tell, just copying files. Things like album art, some metadata, podcast position, etc. don't get synced up at all.

 

[Bourbs]

5 hours later....


Bit ridiculous seeing as I have a 256GB samsung 830 SSD.

 

[badMojo69]

So much fail on MSFTs end. They are going to kill WP8 before it gets off the ground. Watch how many returns they have in two weeks. And did none of these professional reviewers ever mention this huge missing link. The only thing they talked about was the GD camera and weight.

 

[dvdhills]

This experience of syncing WP8 onto Windows 7 has made sure that this is my last Microsoft device. I am so disappointing. I used a 30g and 80g zune. I used windows mobile 6 and wp7. Wp8 will be my last. How could they cut support for Zune and leave WP8 uses with a significantly less functional experience. I have not been able to get a single podcast onto my Lumia 920. As much as I despise the Apple experience, I can not imagine being this disappointed if I had used my upgrade to get an iphone instead of a lumia 920.

 

[Lee B]

Yeah, I keep getting an error message when I try to download the desktop sync app (beta? total side note wtf btw) and I keep getting an error message:

"Windows Phone requires .Net framework 4.0 Please install from 'http://go.microsft.com/?LinkID=186913/' and restart setup"

But when I try to go to that address it's a dead end. Best part now, as I read this blog, even if I were to download the sync a bunch of people are having problems with it. Was the windows 8 release a total surprise to microsoft or do they just expect people won't notice their ****s not working?

I also subscribed to the super expensive xbox music pass but I can't get it to work on my 920. Online it says music pass should appear under the "new" menu in the xbox video/music app but, NOPE!

I must say this has really got me thinking if windows 8 mobile is ready. I'm burnt out on iphone and its lack of innovation but at least their **** worked. I'm wondering now if I should return my 920 and xbox and get a galaxy with a sweet speaker system instead.

I would appreciate any suggestions on how to trouble shoot / thoughts about making a switch to a better functioning ecosystem.

-Thanks

When I tried to download the phone app, I got the same message about needing the .Net framework, but in my case the link worked. .Net and phone app both downloaded and installed with no difficulty. I then used the phone app to sync a 7GB iTunes playlist, and that only took a few clicks and ran fine. On the PC tab, the phone app looks like a mini-clone of iTunes -- it lists all my playlists and music. On the phone side, though, it's not clear that the idea of a playlist has been implemented. Windows Explorer shows that each album has its own folder, and then there are separate folders for "Album" and "Artist", which must serve some purpose that isn't clear to me.

The phone app is labeled " preview", and the OS just came out. I've been here before with new technology and there's always some pain on the bleeding edge. Apple's recent Maps fiasco is only one of many examples. MS certainly has some coding talent to throw at these problems, so I figure things will be getting better.

Maybe sync is a lot smoother if you've never used Zune, and don't expect it to work on WP8.

 

[badMojo69]

This works a lot better than that crappy WP8 app...Welcome to 2003 we missed you!
The Best Way to Sync Windows Phone 8; Not What You’d Expect | Pocketnow

 

[Josiah Glickstein]

Nokia Music does use the Explicit music, but it's more like a radio mix that plays a random track by the artist (if you use the free service) rather than letting you play a particular track. To play the track you want, you have to buy it/own it.