All of this was for Nothing....

[RTGent]

Seems like you have a very fragmented setup there. .

One man's "fragmentation", is another's "got all my computing devices music-loaded and ready". :wink: I've learned how each app works best on each device. BTW, I should have said Zune on the SP2 as well.

I'm also fortunate to be on the 10-credits plan: At a buck a track, I figure I'm paying a balance of $2.50 a month on my annual plan for all the music playback I want on 6 devices!! Is there a better entertainment value anywhere? In this context, music software limitations are so petty to me.

Related acknowledgement: I'm sure I'd be much less tolerant of the XBM gapless recording problem, if it wasn't that my Zune desktop and players, which are my primary listening devices, do play back such live recordings flawlessly.

 

[Hisham Ahmed]

Well.....you could use the Xbox Music Hub through a shortcut provided by reker. I'm sick of the new app too, and here in India, we have no access to Xbox Music (and after losing MixRadio subscriptions, this sounds even more painful, considering Pandora and Spotify and Beats Music doesn't work in India either. Yeesh MS, ignoring your second-biggest costumer-base is a very bad idea)

 

[Simon Gregory]

Nice rant. The Hubs were a great concept the problem with them is that MS has no control over update cycles so this is the bes they could do to bring updates quicker to solve issues. Simply go with the concept that Hubs are dead and move on. It was a nice idea when they had it but without total control of updates it's simply not a viable way of doing things.

How is the current app an improvement over the WP8 music hub (let alone the WP7 Zune Hub)? We went through all the pain to get to a state that's worse than before (and in that time we could have had TWO updates to the built in player).. They are now choosing to turn down development focus on this app, so its not going to get much better anyway. So either the initial reasons given for doing this were an untruth, or the strategy has failed.

 

[Stephen Pedersen]

XBox Music app is simply okay. There's nothing special about it. I'm eagerly anticipating what the Windows 10 team for phone's are coming up. What the develop will determine Whether or not I'll own an apple or not sometime next year. First my smart phone is a cell phone, next it is a music player then it's a computer in that order. I want a good music app period. I'm paying for it for Christ sakes!

 

[Noahma]

I don't have many complaints anymore. Syncing and Refreshing playlists is the biggest annoyance and I've found if I leave the app open long enough it gets around to refreshing them. I'm hoping the last update fixes some of that based on the change log but we'll see.

I am in agreement with you, my problems sans gapless are gone. I updated to an 830 from my 920 and the app performance is much better than it was on the 920. I put a large enough SD card in the 830 that I have all of my music on my phone, I have all of my music on my Tablet, and all on two desktop computers. It is nice to be able to add a song from my phone to a playlist and within a few min. its on EVERY device I have the music on. I did have problems when I had partial list of my music on my phone though, sometimes it would not get the changes to playlists. Everything runs pretty smooth now.

I do think this app was not a waste. I am pretty sure Microsoft will use this app as a base for whatever they are cooking up. The xbox music app has been a universal app since pre 8.1. My guess is that it was a working model for the universal app model.

 

[tapehead]

Garbage and embarrassing app that Microsoft should be ashamed to have its name on. Period.

 

[Dos101]

You know it is getting better, but it's still not up to par to what you get on an iPhone for example. Before the last update Xbox Music would crash almost every single time I locked the screen while playing music (but would still play the music). Now it only crashes every other time. Still have the issue though where after it crashes I can't open the app for a few minutes. Sometimes only a reboot fixes it. Blows my mind that gapless playback still isn't there, even though it's one of the highest voted suggestions on uservoice. Music controls outside the app need to be seriously redone as well (I know some people love it, but many of us do find it quite cumbersome). The overall music experience always leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and the only reason I'm still using my 1520 for music is because there's no 128GB iPod Touch. If Apple ever releases that I'd leave Xbox Music in a heartbeat!

 

[anon(8985111)]

I'm still so confused how so many people can judge this App to be OK.

I've an active Xbox Music subscription, a lightning-fast Lumia 1520 and downloaded my entire collection from the cloud to the device. Just playing music via the shuffle function is a big mess, it takes years to switch between the songs and the actual shuffle function is a joke since it doesn't even manage to switch from a song starting with A to one starting with a character further behind in the alphabet. It's the most awkward experience I've ever come across.

 

[RTGent]

I'm still so confused how so many people can judge this App to be OK.

I've an active Xbox Music subscription, a lightning-fast Lumia 1520 and downloaded my entire collection from the cloud to the device. Just playing music via the shuffle function is a big mess, it takes years to switch between the songs and the actual shuffle function is a joke since it doesn't even manage to switch from a song starting with A to one starting with a character further behind in the alphabet. It's the most awkward experience I've ever come across.

So-confused one: Shuffle is the primary, almost-only way I use XBM on my maybe-less-than-lightning-fast 1020 --in my cars, through simple after-market aux inputs and cheap audio cables; XBM responds immediately when I press the shuffle icon, and then plays smoothly and continuously every time, even when occasionally multi-tasking with HERE Drive+. If it's ever balked or crashed, it's been rare enough so that I didn't fret and I don't remember it. I do get the click at the end of gapless tracks. Unless there is something corrupt or incompatible with your music files, expect such performance. Good luck solving your 1520/XBM problem.

FWIW, forums are great for what's-new and how-to matters, but I always call Microsoft support when I have a software or hardware issue of any kind that I can't solve myself in under a dedicated hour.

 

[anon(8985111)]

So-confused one: Shuffle is the primary, almost-only way I use XBM on my maybe-less-than-lightning-fast 1020 --in my cars, through simple after-market aux inputs and cheap audio cables; XBM responds immediately when I press the shuffle icon, and then plays smoothly and continuously every time, even when occasionally multi-tasking with HERE Drive+. If it's ever balked or crashed, it's been rare enough so that I didn't fret and I don't remember it. I do get the click at the end of gapless tracks. Unless there is something corrupt or incompatible with your music files, expect such performance. Good luck solving your 1520/XBM problem.

FWIW, forums are great for what's-new and how-to matters, but I always call Microsoft support when I have a software or hardware issue of any kind that I can't solve myself in under a dedicated hour.

If it's related to the files, then MS should fix it as I'm only using the files provided by the Xbox Music subscription service...