I am a long time Zune and ZunePass user and I really love the music ecosystem that Microsoft has.
That said, it is easy to see that XBOX Music is an "alpha" release at best, even 6 months later. Little (if anything) has been added to make its experience any better. No clear indication from Microsoft on how it is really to work or what they plan to do about it. There is the XBOX Music Appp on the XBOX, PC and Phone. There are weak apps for "Modern" and "Desktop" for Windows Phone to help sync music. There are usage right errors now and then...there is no easy way to make playlists on the phone...nearly impossible to work with the cloud collection and even add music to it that they do not have cataloged.
I've tried to live with and work around ALL of these issues and it still is not a fun experience. But here's what I currently do.
So, this is really not the ideal way to do it but for now, it gives me some peace as I wait on Microsoft to finally tell us how XBOX Music is intended to be used. SO, to recap, items that still need to be refined or fixed:
That said, it is easy to see that XBOX Music is an "alpha" release at best, even 6 months later. Little (if anything) has been added to make its experience any better. No clear indication from Microsoft on how it is really to work or what they plan to do about it. There is the XBOX Music Appp on the XBOX, PC and Phone. There are weak apps for "Modern" and "Desktop" for Windows Phone to help sync music. There are usage right errors now and then...there is no easy way to make playlists on the phone...nearly impossible to work with the cloud collection and even add music to it that they do not have cataloged.
I've tried to live with and work around ALL of these issues and it still is not a fun experience. But here's what I currently do.
- First, if I want music on my phone and want to keep it in playlists, I manage music in the Zune Software by making playlists and adding music to those playlists...if I need music off my XBOX Music pass, I download it here and add to play list.
- I use the DESKTOP Windows Phone app to sync the selected playlists to my phone. Since I am on the 32GB Lumia (used to a 64GB ZuneHD), I usually only copy over my "most" favorite music.
- In the XBOX Music app on my PC, I make playlists to be played by Streaming. Since they are for some reason limited to only 1000 songs, I sometimes have to make two playlists per category and then choose both in the XBOX Music app to play or play one on my phone and add the other to NOW PLAYING. I then fire these playlists up when I am able to stream.
So, this is really not the ideal way to do it but for now, it gives me some peace as I wait on Microsoft to finally tell us how XBOX Music is intended to be used. SO, to recap, items that still need to be refined or fixed:
- An all in one solution to Music syncing (like Zune Software)
- Better playlist management on the phone.
- Sometimes changing songs stutters the album art/song title on WP8, regardless of streaming or not.
- Album art is often incomplete and I have to use a (useful) third party app to fix album art.
- Allowing more than 1000 songs in a playlist.
- Allowing XBOX Music on the XBOX to play multiple playlists since we are limited to 1000 songs.