MusicNow

[mzetko]

Hello friends,

sorry for the late report this time, I caught some illness and was unable to work for a few days.

I am in the process of switching the project to a new underlying framework with better capabilities, which I learnt during the time I was getting better, I think it will have really big advantages.

A question for you - what are some "frustrations" you have with current version of Xbox Music app? I want to get some feedback of what I should be aware of and where to put higher focus, because there can be even subtle things that could make the experience worse.

Thank you all for your help!

Martin Zikmund

 

[Shodan_HR]

Hello friends,

sorry for the late report this time, I caught some illness and was unable to work for a few days.

I am in the process of switching the project to a new underlying framework with better capabilities, which I learnt during the time I was getting better, I think it will have really big advantages.

A question for you - what are some "frustrations" you have with current version of Xbox Music app? I want to get some feedback of what I should be aware of and where to put higher focus, because there can be even subtle things that could make the experience worse.

Thank you all for your help!

Martin Zikmund

resuming
unable to fetch Rights
live tile only live while playing music (like iam gonna watch my screen while listening music :/ )
and option of different color of tile (if somebody doesnt like live tiles)... one thing that bothers me is that devs dont put option of changing colors on your tiles, i hate it when almost everything on my start screen is same color...

 

[mzetko]

resuming
unable to fetch Rights
live tile only live while playing music (like iam gonna watch my screen while listening music :/ )
and option of different color of tile (if somebody doesnt like live tiles)... one thing that bothers me is that devs dont put option of changing colors on your tiles, i hate it when almost everything on my start screen is same color...

Thank you very much, Shodan_HR! I will do my best to fix the first two issues. The Live tile will be customizable and you will be able to choose either transparent one or have it's color match app's accent color (which is does not have to be the same as the system accent color as I mentioned before). Animated artist art for even when the playback is not running is a great idea!

 

[K_Arora5]

Is it actually possible to have artist art on the live tile like the previous music hub by using mpa tool?

 

[Arggus]

Is it in Beta stage? (Can I join?

 

[rizzo183]

Thank you very much, Shodan_HR! I will do my best to fix the first two issues. The Live tile will be customizable and you will be able to choose either transparent one or have it's color match app's accent color (which is does not have to be the same as the system accent color as I mentioned before). Animated artist art for even when the playback is not running is a great idea!

I think the Live Tile should be more "live" like the photos hub tile in which the photos pan around as opposed to static images.

What exactly do you mean by "animated"?

 

[mzetko]

Is it in Beta stage? (Can I join?

Hello Arggus, beta version will be public, so you will be able to join definitely . But it is not out yet, so please watch this thread .

 

[mzetko]

Is it actually possible to have artist art on the live tile like the previous music hub by using mpa tool?

Yes and no . I can't replicate the "text animation" effect that the Music app has, because the API they are using is not open to developers. However, displaying artist images embedded in music files should definitely be possible.

 

[mzetko]

I think the Live Tile should be more "live" like the photos hub tile in which the photos pan around as opposed to static images.

What exactly do you mean by "animated"?

Well, I am afraid the animated panning and zooming image tile is not available for Windows Phone Runtime apps... I will check, but I think they replaced it with static cycling images, so it just flips through up to 5 images.

"Animated" was probably a bit wrong word . But what I had in mind was to display the tile similar to the "People" app, which would display a number of artist/album images that would animate in a similar fashion as the People tile does (this would be for when music is not playing, otherwise there would be just a large tile artist image for the current song).

 

[Alin Iulian]

Some images with the UI of app?

 

[mzetko]

Some images with the UI of app?

Well there is a "UI", but not something I would like to post yet, because it is far from polished. But I am going to post here at least some fragments very soon .

 

[keerthi vasan]

Hello, keerthi vasan,

currently I am accessing music files in the Music libraries only (meaning Music on SD card and Music in Internal Storage). This has the advantage of having faster access to the library files via the built in library methods. The access times were sadly even faster in Windows Phone 8, but still it is better than direct storage access, because you can just get the list of all files in the tree at once.

In future versions I will try to add a way to allow to add more locations to take music from, if some optimization will help.

Good for me that it accesses only the music folder. Music player apps in my phone which try to access all folders except Xbox music and mixradio strangely crash on startup consistently. So had my doubts cleared to avoid disappointment after I download the app.

 

[Alin Iulian]

Well there is a "UI", but not something I would like to post yet, because it is far from polished. But I am going to post here at least some fragments very soon .

http://forums.windowscentral.com/wi...-[concept]-more-colours-windows-phone-ui.html You can make something like this if you want, it's clear and modern.

 

[Sascha Hoppe1]

If you are looking to add an Artist image to your live tile/now playing screen, I suggest to utilize the last.fm Rest-API to catch the artist image and cache that in your app db.

 

[mzetko]

http://forums.windowscentral.com/wi...-[concept]-more-colours-windows-phone-ui.html You can make something like this if you want, it's clear and modern.

Thank you Alin, that looks great ! The more inspiration, the better .

 

[K_Arora5]

Hey dev any updates about the development of the app?

 

[mzetko]

If you are looking to add an Artist image to your live tile/now playing screen, I suggest to utilize the last.fm Rest-API to catch the artist image and cache that in your app db.

Hello Sascha Hoppe1,

yes, I was already thinking about this. When the music collection will first be retrieved, I will just rely on the embedded artist art, but will then in the background search for additional artist art for the artists and albums. The Last.FM API is very, very useful, thank you for suggesting that. I definitely intend to integrate Last.FM !

Thank you again!

 

[mzetko]

Hello K_Arora5,

development continues ! I have already fully replaced the underlying framework to the new one as I mentioned earlier. Also I have done some cleaning of the playback service. Currently my focus is on the UI, individual pages, basically the main functionality .

I will report back here by the end of the week, I think I will have some nice progress .

Martin Zikmund

 

[Aniket Mhatre]

4/7/2014 to 5/11/2014 (EDIT: 4/07/2014 to 11/11/2014) you taking too much time bro. I don't know anything about the development process but you really need to work fast. Xbox music sucks. You gave us a small hope please develop your app fast. Why don't you release beta version(private) and not public and after that continue your development

Nokia Lumia 925 India

 

[amitnahar]

4/7/2014 to 5/11/2014 (EDIT: 4/07/2014 to 11/11/2014) you taking too much time bro. I don't know anything about the development process but you really need to work fast. Xbox music sucks. You gave us a small hope please develop your app fast. Why don't you release beta version(private) and not public and after that continue your development


Nokia Lumia 925 India

I am waiting for this app. Meanwhile you can look at Zbox. Its really great.