Considering upgrading from WP7 to WP8. Is Xbox Music still a disaster?

[jptbay]

My family has 3 WP7 users and heavily uses Zune and ZunePass.

My wife tried upgrading to a Lumia 920 last year with WP8, but the Xbox music issues were so horrible, it made using our music collection impossible. She returned the 920 and got a Lumia 900 instead.

We are again considering upgrading to WP8. Have any improvements been made in Xbox Music?

Thanks, John.

 

[stmav]

GDR2 will also address some of the quality of life issues with Windows Phone 8’s Xbox Music client including more accurate metadata, and the ability to pin music inside of Xbox Music.

 

[wolfgangjr]

If you only use zunepass then its business as usual. Sadly owned media still sucks to manage.

 

[ListenUpGuys]

There's really very little reason to upgrade except that WP8 has half-decent SD card support and about 4 extra apps. It is missing two of the best games from WP7 though. I thought VLC would be out by now but it's not.

If you have a compilation Album, Windows Phone still thinks that's 12 albums with one song on each. Disaster is a great word for the Music Hub generally I think.

 

[a5cent]

IMHO music management on WP8 is unbearable. GDR2 isn't too far off and is expected to fix some (maybe most?) of the issues. If I were in your shoes, I would wait to see what GDR2 brings to the table.

 

[jptbay]

I'm going to wait then.

Microsoft is really blowing it these days. Forcing junk on users that don't want it. From Windows8 to Xbox1 to Xbox Music. Their arrogance is at their peril. I'm not buying products from a company that refuses to listen to their fanbase.

I love WP7 at least.

 

[rdubmu]

With being in the music business since the original Zune came out over 5 years ago, I would think that they would have figured it out by now. Zune on the WP7 was good, you could even say great, they should have never killed the brand or change much from it. They should have added Zune to W8 and xbox instead of putting a half baked music management on each device.

Luckily for me, ITunes manages my library on my mac, and xbox music syncs to it. I am afraid to try it with xbox music on a w8 machine.

 

[thaman04]

Microsoft is really blowing it these days. Forcing junk on users that don't want it. From Windows8 to Xbox1 to Xbox Music. Their arrogance is at their peril. I'm not buying products from a company that refuses to listen to their fanbase.

Umm... you do know all that crap is mostly just general perception and keyboard warriors saying all those things, not their fanbase. Windows 8 is amazing (with a few quirks), and with Windows 8.1 it's only going to get way better. Xbox One was actually amazing with some new and innovative features that are now gone because they LISTENED to the whiners. Microsoft is trying to continually innovate and be different, but people on the internet love to bully Microsoft, whereas when Apple and Google release something they get praised. If Microsoft keeps listening to the whiners, they're gonna lose their unique and innovative spark that most of their true fanbase truly loved about them. So I wouldn't say they're blowing it, they just need better PR people, and a way to change user perception of the company. Also, with the major restructuring happening, I think it'll make things much better as currently the company is way too big and by simplifying the company it'll allow them to release things faster.

But yes, I do have to say Xbox Music is a big mess.... they really should have just rebranded Zune and added features to that.

 

[jptbay]

It's not general perception... it's my perception.

I have Windows 8 thank you. IMO forcing users, especially in a business environment to use a start screen that is a touch centric metro based design is crazy. Yes, there are a lot of improvements in Windows 8, but Microsoft used a very heavy handed approach to make users head in a direction they don't necessarily want to go. Guess what, 8.1 is a reaction to the outrage.


Xbox1? Draconian changes to DRM and game sharing, never mind the always on internet horse****. I live in a rural area, have limited bandwidth and pay dearly for usage. Thankfully Microsoft is responding to the **** storm, although not far enough. I need to pay for Xbox gold to use Netflix? Forget it, I'll use the Playstation thank-you. I currently have an Xbox 360 and a PS3. Guess which new console is in my future? It's not the one from the company that FORCES me to buy a Kinect that I don't want for $100 more.

Xbox Music or Video for WP8? Glad we agree its an insulting disaster.

 

[tvolpe86]

It's not general perception... it's my perception.

I have Windows 8 thank you. IMO forcing users, especially in a business environment to use a start screen that is a touch centric metro based design is crazy. Yes, there are a lot of improvements in Windows 8, but Microsoft used a very heavy handed approach to make users head in a direction they don't necessarily want to go. Guess what, 8.1 is a reaction to the outrage.


Xbox1? Draconian changes to DRM and game sharing, never mind the always on internet horse****. I live in a rural area, have limited bandwidth and pay dearly for usage. Thankfully Microsoft is responding to the **** storm, although not far enough. I need to pay for Xbox gold to use Netflix? Forget it, I'll use the Playstation thank-you. I currently have an Xbox 360 and a PS3. Guess which new console is in my future? It's not the one from the company that FORCES me to buy a Kinect that I don't want for $100 more.

Xbox Music or Video for WP8? Glad we agree its an insulting disaster.

they aren't forcing anyone to use touch screen. it's called desktop. on a traditional mouse and keyb. setup the start screen, imo, is way better than an alphabetized start menu. i have it fully customized into groups of tiles of my most used programs along with live tiles that update at a glance with convenient info such as weather and my stocks. i don't ever actually use the touch-based apps. the tiles screen is just a fully customized start screen for me and everything i've pinned there loads on the desktop. i live on the desktop side. oh, and with a SSD my computer turns on like 5 seconds faster, just about near instantly if i didn't have to sit through a mobo post screen or 2. performance over my previous W7 install is also noticeable.

and drm on the xbox 1 was reversed. their goals were ambitious but they learned you can't combine the physical aspects of console ownership with a completely digital marketplace. they need to be separate and they'll reintroduce a lot of the cool features that got scrapped from the policy reversal to no drm once they rework their policies/tech (the inevitable was only delayed, the goal is to go disc-less but consumers won't allow their offline freedoms to be taken away in the process). they wanted physical discs to behave like digital purchases to bring both worlds of game distribution together. again, very ambitious but, as proven by consumers, not realistic because it removed any offline freedoms you have with your purchases (digital or physical). it's one or the other and eventually everything will move to disc-less and digital anyway like Steam (while preserving offline freedoms, like Steam). Without trying to draw a compromise between physical and digital and just eventually going all digital, consumers' offline freedoms won't be jeopardized by "draconian" drm policies. they'll gradually work towards this with firmware updates and policy changes over time instead of trying to change too much too fast, as the console was meant to support it at launch and is future-proof to a good extent. to me, the $100 is more than justifiable just based on the fact alone it is future-proof because of the cloud infrastructure backing it and PS4 isn't. And if you don't already pay for a Gold membership than there are 100 other ways to get Netflix on your TV, which is an afterthought for me anyway because I buy consoles TO PLAY GAMES. I own both PS3 and 360 and will probably own both the PS4 and One when games come out on each that I'm interested in playing that I can't play on current gen/pc. waiting till well after launch, maybe a year.

as for xbox music, i have no experience with it as i still have my htc trophy and manage everything on the phone with zune. all i know is, after using some sweet program i purchased to rip all of my brother's existing music off his old iphone instantly and spending very little time correcting some of it's metadata in windows media player (as a lot of his stuff was incorrect prior), i drag-and-dropped it over to his Lumia 928 and the Xbox Music hub in his phone functions as any music hub/player should..it plays his music and is all properly organized. i've never ventured to use xbox music on my laptop or desktop since I live in the desktop side and unpinned any unnecessary metro/modern style apps from my home screen.

 

[Nimdock]

I really have not had any issues with Xbox Music.

 

[MikeSo]

Xbox Music works OK, but it's got a lot of issues. Compared to Zune on WP7 it's a huge step backwards. I wouldn't hesitate to call it a "disaster", because it's just a real pain to use, especially if you don't have a Windows 8 PC.
If you have an Xbox Music sub and only download from there to the phone it's OK though. Except even then I've gotten some error messages about not having permission to play songs, and had to reboot to get it working again. I NEVER had any issue like that in WP7.

 

[jptbay]

O.K. Some months and new updates have gone by. Original post question still applies. What is the current state of affairs?

Please no ****** trolling. I'm no Microsoft hater.

 

[d_abbatelli]

O.K. Some months and new updates have gone by. Original post question still applies. What is the current state of affairs?

Please no ****** trolling. I'm no Microsoft hater.

Not much changed... There are some claims that the Music app got faster and perhaps less duplicate issues, but there's also still people with duplicates. And advanced stuff like wi-fi syncing is still far away.
My suggestion is stay with WP7 and wait for 8.1, if that changes anything...

 

[jptbay]

Thanks for the reply.

I have been reading and catching up on the forum here, and am sadly disappointed with the lack of progress.

Shameful that such a good music experience on WP7 with Zune can't be shared with WP8. Especially when some family members would use WP7, and some WP8.

Concentrating on skydrive integration into most applications, including music, shows how out of touch Microsoft is. The cloud is useless to me for music. I can't afford to pay for the bandwidth or data that it requires.

Good thing I'm happy enough with our Lumia 900's.

 

[ShaolinTurbo]

The music app is absolutely terrible. They want to push us into the cloud not support people with their own music collections. I have an Ativ S and I like everything about WP8 except the horrible basic and slow music player. Im ready to upgrade to a 1020 but I wont if its more of the same. I asked in the 1020 forum how the music player is on the Nokia but my post was removed .

 

[N_LaRUE]

The music app is absolutely terrible. They want to push us into the cloud not support people with their own music collections. I have an Ativ S and I like everything about WP8 except the horrible basic and slow music player. Im ready to upgrade to a 1020 but I wont if its more of the same. I asked in the 1020 forum how the music player is on the Nokia but my post was removed .

If you're referring to Nokia Music app, it's not much different than Xbox Music app in appearance. Has all the same issues as Xbox music because they're tied together. The only difference is that you have Nokia Mix Radio, which is streaming and free and OK.

As has been pointed out, the music experience is quite the let down currently on WP. The app for W8 is not much better. Hopefully this changes soon.

 

[ShaolinTurbo]

Thanks for clearing that up. Im really really attracted to the 1020 and its camera but might skip it as I also like my music. The Sony Z1 Mini could be a good alternative. Its rumored to have the same 20MP sensor and processor as its big bro but in a much smaller package. Could be a good option as I dont like phones with 5"+ screens.

 

[lippidp]

I was also hesitant to move to WP8 because of everyone complaining about Xbox Music. Once the 920 went down to one cent on contract and GDR2 was released I thought I'd give it a try.

I found that the program to synch music from the PC to the phone was terrible. You could only select entire albums, but not specific tracks, for example. Additionally, the music took up much more storage on the phone than it used to on my WP7 using Zune. So I deleted it all from my phone and ended up doing copy/paste using Windows Explorer instead. This gave me the control I needed and also converted the files into sizes I was expecting. I am happy with that.

I will say that all of my music was ripped from CDs using Zune. I don't use any cloud music services and haven't used Zune Pass or iTunes to buy anything so can't speak to how WP8 works with those.

One pleasant surprise on the 1020 I ended up getting is that there is an audio leveling feature that will play back all tracks at the same volume. It used to be some of my albums would play back much quieter than others requiring me to adjust the volume. That is no longer the case. This is a Nokia feature and not WP8, so I don't know if HTC or Samsung offers anything similar.

Another complaint I read about was overall volume on WP8 being too low. That does seem to be true, but I rarely use headphones so it is a non-issue for me. I simply increased the volume on my car stereo.

The visuals on WP8 are not as appealing as they were on WP7, but I care more about the music than the picture of the artist and so don't mind much.

So, generally speaking, I would not say that WP8 is an upgrade to WP7. I would call it more of a give and take migration. Overall, given the additional storage, audio leveling, and killer camera of the 1020 I am happy I made the switch.

 

[ShaolinTurbo]

I have a WP Ativ S at the moment and its true the volume is too low. Also the music player is really basic. you cant search for example. also really annoying that when you stop playing for a while and go back to music it completely loses your place in the playlist! It opens up the music app completely from fresh.
If I copy music directly through the file explorer then it often doubles or triples the track names, sometimes up to 6 times (I have a Win8 PC so it should really sync perfectly). I had about 6Gb of music on the phone and the music app starts running very slow. Basically just not a great experience compared to PowerAmp on Android for example. I dont mind paying for apps but there isnt a decent music player alternative in the store. Its all based around cloud streaming. They just cant get away with such a basic music player in this day and age. Once you get a fair number of tracks on the phone it all falls apart. Its a show stopper for me and such a pity because the 1020 looks like a great device. It doesn't look like there will be any big WP updates for a while either so back to Android for me.