[clechner77]

Other than the live tiles, which is disappointing but I know for a FACT will be updated shortly. To me, xbox musc....er, music, looks similar though searching for artists/albums in the store is slightly different. It's actually just as fast, if not faster for me, but it could be my 1520. Sorry, not trolling, but it seems like a common theme people seem disappointed in.

[mozman68]

Right there with you...I don't notice any difference other than the live tile I never looked at anyway. 1520 here as well.

[jmr60]

Did you ever use a real Zune, or the zune music app on WP7? Did you ever use either of those with the Zune PC software to choose and sync content for the mobile device? That ecosystem is vastly superior to the "XBOX Music" mess that came out with WP8 and Windows 8. The WP8 music app has been a buggy mess from the beginning, and the PC sync software is so horrible to use that it barely makes the grade as a poorly thought out student project.

[distilledoreo]

I am totally fine with it except for the fact that it tries to play music in my collection that I haven't bought without a music pass. If I play my music it has to pass a bunch of songs to get to one actually on my device.
UPDATE: Turns out I had to restart my device after turning off the streaming music toggle in the settings... Now the app is perfectly fine!

[clechner77]

Ah............... so it's previous Zune stuff that's different. No, I never used Zune to sync music. I made the decision to get myself out of the downloaded music business a while ago. Instead it's all streaming for me. Yes, there's limitations at times but I don't miss the constant syncing/ripping music everywhere with different devices, tags, etc. I can understand though if you get that all taken away -- that would be frustrating.

[david90531]

The app is definitely slower on L920, this and the live tile would be my only complaint

[MikeSo]

At first glance it's fine, and probably for occasional use too. It's when you use it a lot and have lots of music that you really start to notice all the little deficiencies, and they quickly add up to a really underwhelming experience, not worthy of a modern music player.

[berty6294]

Its buggy as hell and lacks not only the features that Zune had but even lacks features the featureless Music+Videos app had!

[Nogitsune Micah]

I never understood the hate. It is mainly people getting upset because of the loss of Zune. I used Zune on desktop and windows phone 7 and it was really good

However Xbox music really hasn't been that awful for me truth be told. The only thing I hated was the Inability to make playlists. I always thought it was decent.

The version on 8.1 is slightly inferior but even then it is not that bad.

[jmr60]

Zune with Zune Pass supported streaming too. Downloading subscription content, purchasing outright, streaming, and managing non-Zune owned content (e.g. ripped CDs). Powerful management of what to sync to mobile device (Zune players, WP7 app) by album, artist, song, and perhaps more that I never used. Automatic syncing of folders (podcast people love that, I never used it.) Wireless sync on Wi-Fi models (Zune HD). Direct download and streaming to Wi-Fi capable players (Zune HD) and over Wi-Fi or cell data service (WP7 app) without using any PC. PC software that was perfectly happy managing and syncing Zune DRM and unprotected content all together. Working album art :-). All that for $10 a month. Does that give you an idea?

It wasn't perfect (no gapless playback there either), but it sure was very good. The XBOX must stuff that came out with W8 and WP8 is so astonishingly inferior to what they already had that you have to wonder who turned their brains off. It's like 5 times worse of a screw-up than the Windows 8 on desktops debacle, just less well known.

[red grenadine]

Zune with Zune Pass supported streaming too. Downloading subscription content, purchasing outright, streaming, and managing non-Zune owned content (e.g. ripped CDs). Powerful management of what to sync to mobile device (Zune players, WP7 app) by album, artist, song, and perhaps more that I never used. Automatic syncing of folders (podcast people love that, I never used it.) Wireless sync on Wi-Fi models (Zune HD). Direct download and streaming to Wi-Fi capable players (Zune HD) and over Wi-Fi or cell data service (WP7 app) without using any PC. PC software that was perfectly happy managing and syncing Zune DRM and unprotected content all together. Working album art :-). All that for $10 a month. Does that give you an idea?

It wasn't perfect (no gapless playback there either), but it sure was very good. The XBOX must stuff that came out with W8 and WP8 is so astonishingly inferior to what they already had that you have to wonder who turned their brains off. It's like 5 times worse of a screw-up than the Windows 8 on desktops debacle, just less well known.

Zune HD had gapless playback

[Xpider_MX]

Zune with Zune Pass supported streaming too. Downloading subscription content, purchasing outright, streaming, and managing non-Zune owned content (e.g. ripped CDs). Powerful management of what to sync to mobile device (Zune players, WP7 app) by album, artist, song, and perhaps more that I never used. Automatic syncing of folders (podcast people love that, I never used it.) Wireless sync on Wi-Fi models (Zune HD). Direct download and streaming to Wi-Fi capable players (Zune HD) and over Wi-Fi or cell data service (WP7 app) without using any PC. PC software that was perfectly happy managing and syncing Zune DRM and unprotected content all together. Working album art :-). All that for $10 a month. Does that give you an idea?

It wasn't perfect (no gapless playback there either), but it sure was very good. The XBOX must stuff that came out with W8 and WP8 is so astonishingly inferior to what they already had that you have to wonder who turned their brains off. It's like 5 times worse of a screw-up than the Windows 8 on desktops debacle, just less well known.

But you are comparing with Zune, a not Windows Phone 8 service.

[Boggy79]

It's not great but it does the job. Syncing is not as good as WP7 and Zune but the latest 8.1 version is improved over the stock version that 8 launched with in my eyes. Maybe it's because I haven't had any of the issues others are complaining about, maybe it's because I can finally create playlists on the phone and stop using my 5 year old ipod.

[Stephen Pedersen]

The Zune software looked pretty. I'll give it that. However, compared to iTunes, Zune was playing checkers instead of chess. iTunes has so much more functionality. I use my phone mainly for music. Which means I ought to get an iPhone next. I might. I was just tempted to buy a Windows Phone 8 because of the $60 price tag of a Lumia 521. It's an amazing piece of hardware for the price. I hope the next update to WP8 Xbox music app is a big leap. I feel like I've been patient like a statue. However, the SD Card song duplication issue that STILL hasn't been resolved either. I can't rank songs and have them automatically put into a playlist. Random play isn't very random. There is no option to start and resume big files, like an audiobook or a lecture. Xbox music basically lets you stream, download, and make a playlist. That's it. A decade ago I was able to do more with my clunky iPod Mini.

[shaan sarode]

+920 i dislike the new music app for the sole reason it won't sync to my iTunes anymore. Only thing left to do is hard reset my phone which i do not want to do..... Re download that awful windows phone sync software for windows 8..... UI is bad, doesn't connect half the time, and goes through iTunes which makes it incredibly slow. And then the music app, i never used Xbox music so idk what it was like, i just used the free music+videos app but i listen to music everyday so it's quite inconvenient.... Wish they would just make a separate music player with NO XBOX MUSIC CRAP integration.... I don't care what album is trending right now

[byobg]

Zune HD had gapless playback

Zune HD had gapless playback for non-DRM'd WMA files. For MP3 and DRM'd WMA files, it varied from "barely noticeable gap" to "oh yeah, that's a gap alright." The original 30Gb Zune with a hard disk did gapless much better, in keeping with the overall "de-evolution" trajectory.

[JJohnson1701]

The hate on X-Box Music is that it's so huge a feature gap from Zune. Loads of people had Zune who got Windows Phones, and the difference is night and day between the apps.

-Zune had a beautiful Now Playing screen with a scrolling artist picture and flowing text, which slowly changed colors if you left your mouse still. It was soothing. Then the Now Playing screen itself with the playlist and album cover had turning album art from your collection, with flowing text and slowly changing colors. Again beautiful. XBM had weird geometric shapes over a gray/black background. Dull. Stark. Soviet.
-Zune could play/synch/search for podcasts. XBM Can't because that functionality was removed into a separate, not-often-updated podcast app. And why? No earthly idea.
-Zune could play audiobooks on the desktop and in the Zune HD player (through 3rd party software though). XBM can't. Just use genre to mark as 'audiobook' and the sub-genre to mark the genre of the audiobook! How hard is that??
-Zune had channels - subscribed playlists that changed every so often that were professionally curated. XBM doesn't.
-Zune had picks - based on what you played, you got different recommendations. XBM doesn't.
-Zune had easy playlist creation - select multiple items at once (wow! Who'd have thought!?! </sarcasm>) to add to a playlist or move around. You can't do that on XBM. You can't even create a video playlist.
-Zune had easy metadata editing for music. XBM doesn't.
-Look at Windows Media Player in Windows XP. It had an advanced metadata editor where you could edit EVERYTHING in the ID3 spec - BPM, language, country, mood, back cover, side cover, front cover. XBM can't do that.
-Zune didn't alter your metadata without your permission. XBM does.
-Zune didn't play one song thinking it was another, reporting the wrong title, play length, and album. XBM does. (play an unmatched remix and you'll get the same results. I played Girl from Ipanema Goes to Greenland (Extended Remix) which is about 8 minutes, and XBM reported it was playing the album version, which is 4:22, and it reported the wrong album.).
-Zune had metadata editing for video files. I could tell it that a file was a TV show, and tell it series, season, episode, description, and title of the episode. XBM and XBV can't do that.
-Zune had Social. You could message friends, send them music, see what they played, top artists, recent plays, etc. Great way to discover music. XBM doesn't.
-Zune HD had a Facebook app with a Zune button to easily share what you're playing. Only now did XBM gain that share button. But it still can't share an entire playlist with a friend, an entire album, or an artist, and collate those within the app like Zune could.
-Zune had achievements for listening to music (bronze, silver, and gold). XBM doesn't.
-Zune HD had little album art under genre and artist to let you see about how many albums there were. XBM doesn't.
-Zune had pivots for navigation, making it easy to move around the app. XBM doesn't. It has a sidebar that's always there, and forces you to scroll down a long way to maybe see what's there. The pivots are a key Metro feature that XBM doesn't follow. It's the aesthetics of the XBM app that I object to here.
-Zune had recent and new pivots in the hub. XBM doesn't. It only recently added 'recent' back and then only if you play something.
-Zune made browsing the store easier with the left-hand genre menu. XBM doesn't have this and it's a bit harder to navigate in comparison.
-Zune could purchase phone apps, like iTunes still can. XBM can't.
-Zune could synch to your phone, like iTunes still can. XBM can't.
-Zune could wirelessly synch to your Zune HD or Phone, like iTunes still can. XBM can't.

Our objection is that they threw the baby out with the bathwater. No customer was asking them to drop Zune as a name. No one asked them to split one app into 5. That was a stupid decision. The XBM software is bugged, lags, has too few features in comparison to Zune, does things people don't want it to do without permission (change your metadata), has a mildly confusing interface that isn't easily discoverable, and is plain ugly in comparison to Zune. To be honest, I would continue to purchase Zune HD devices for the foreseeable future and keep Windows 7 on all my computers just so I could avoid having to use X-Box Music. I viscerally hate that software. The very name equates to 'horrible experience' in my book. All Microsoft can do now, is drop the name, merge all the features back, call it Zune, and then apologize for this little mistake, and move forward.

[byobg]

The Zune software looked pretty. I'll give it that. However, compared to iTunes, Zune was playing checkers instead of chess. iTunes has so much more functionality.

I think SOME people think that Zune was the high-water mark for all music management and playback systems in the history of Earth - but I'm not one of those people. It was less full-featured than iTunes, though I've never been enough of a fan of iTunes to really make use of what I trust is great about it. Zune was never perfect, but it was good enough to handle most people's daily music needs without making them angry.


XBM definitely handles SOME people's music needs just fine - I don't think the people who claim to like the app are lying. But I think it's kind of the same way that Windows Notepad covers 90% of what my Dad needs in a word processor - it's less about Notepad being good, and more about his needs being easy to meet.

[silvertonesx24]

I don't care what the app is called. I have the Xbox Music pass, and quite a bit of music on my 920, and the player is terribly buggy and slow. Forget trying to fire it up quickly (resuming.....crash). Why remove the recently added feature? Why is the music discovery process so clunky? What happened to the lock screen cover photo?

And the search function for finding music to download in the store is slower than molasses and beyond retarded. Try downloading an album from the store quickly before you leave. It may be there, and it may not. Always fun to get into the car and find out the album you were eagerly anticipating listening never downloaded, and never showed up in your queue.