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.
. All that for $10 a month. Does that give you an idea?
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram