8.1 Developer Preview Everything Music Thread

[Jack Janik]

Guys, we all know this is a rather frustrating time for all of us. However, let's try to keep the pointless arguing to a minimum?

It's hard to find helpful information in this thread as it's full of people trying to 1-Up each other..


Before WP 8.1, my phone occasionally would only play audio through a single channel, well, in the past month, it's slowly became more frequent. I'm at the point, where if I'm listening to an album, and pause the music to take a call for five minutes, (using the built in microphone) and then plug my headphones back in, and resume the album, the audio will only come out of the left channel. No, it's not the headphones, I've tested them on my Surface, PC, my Lumia 520, and even my brother's Nexus!

I just don't understand. Is there anything I can do besides a hard reset? This is very frustrating to me.

 

[dlalonde]

Well actually Xbox Music is pretty much only available to people on the dev preview at the moment (besides Lumia 630 owners) so until they release the whole OS officially technically it's all a beta. And in regard to the negative image thing, people forget that this is still an OS build UNDER DEVELOPMENT and the fact that it is a non-final version with some bugs. The Music app is such an example. So it's silly to complain as if it were the full version because there are still bugs and kinks which will most likely be worked out by the final release. You have to accept some bugs for a developing OS, and MS did say this themselves

They may have taken an apparent step backward in regards to the music app, but heck, for a developer preview I'd say we're all lucky there aren't any major bugs in it (I had the iOS 7 beta 1 preview on my iPhone and all the wireless radios would not work)

That's not really true. The OS is indeed RTM and the app itself is available to everyone on the Windows Phone. So the image thing and the complaining are justified. Plus I'm not complaining about the OS itself which is awesome. But music being the major part of the mobile experience for me, given that it's the only option officially available, it's normal that we'd expect a minimum of fonctionnalities that other platforms (including past versions) offer.

 

[MDMcAtee]

I don't know why some of the developers can't make a decent music app without dealing with all of the streaming from a paid source.

Just a simple one for those of us who just want to load our collections onto out devices and have the album art remain intact without deleting it,not showing it,putting it into a wrong folder,ect,ect,ect.

While I am all for buying music and downloading it,I already have 2000 cds and 250 blue ray movies and 1000 normal dvd movies I would like to add and not go through all of this headaches and troubles. the last update did help somewhat in that I can now see half of my album art,but that doesn't go far enough to make this good enough. One would think that a multi Billion dollar software Giant could do this and have it work even for a developer preview if they were even the least bit interested but I feel they are more concerned with having us pay for the privilege of listening to music or viewing movies and don't want us using what we already have paid for,and as such making a very low priority if at all.

That's what is very sad to me and is making me considering moving completely off the Windows platform,their lack of care for those who choose not to pay for the pleasure of listening to music.........so sad....

Mac

 

[Philippe Maes]

Soon, you won't need Xbox Music to play your music anymore!
I'm developing an app called "One Music". It should launch in two weeks tops.

It will be the first fully independant music app. What I mean by this is that all third party music apps in the store launch Xbox Music when tapping the music menu (which opens when pressing a volume key) instead of the correct app, they also can't set a position in a track.
The app will also allow to make playlists (last added and most played playlists will be automatically available).

Screenshots below:

 

[amitnahar]

One Music is absolutely brilliant. Thanks Phillipe

 

[smoledman]

Soon, you won't need Xbox Music to play your music anymore!
I'm developing an app called "One Music". It should launch in two weeks tops.

It will be the first fully independant music app. What I mean by this is that all third party music apps in the store launch Xbox Music when tapping the music menu (which opens when pressing a volume key) instead of the correct app, they also can't set a position in a track.
The app will also allow to make playlists (last added and most played playlists will be automatically available).

Screenshots below:
View attachment 67384View attachment 67385

Will One Music have a persistent nav bar like iOS Music app? To me lack of this is a dealbreaker.

 

[amitnahar]

Will One Music have a persistent nav bar like iOS Music app? To me lack of this is a dealbreaker.

What do you mean by persistent nav bar?

 

[smoledman]

What do you mean by persistent nav bar?

Take a look at these screenshots - the nav bar at the bottom.

 

[amitnahar]

Take a look at these screenshots - the nav bar at the bottom.

View attachment 67387

It will have the now playing bar at the bottom. But you can just swipe to get albums, artists, playlists and songs. Haven't you looked at above screen shots.

 

[themadpoet1]

Will this new One music player be able to read metadata correctly or at least have some ability to change the album art? Also, can you screenshot how the album browse will look?

 

[amitnahar]

Will this new One music player be able to read metadata correctly or at least have some ability to change the album art? Also, can you screenshot how the album browse will look?

I am not able to post screenshots from mobile app. Pm me your mail id: will send screen shots.

 

[xconomicron]

I've been praising Windows Phone since I've discovered it. But right now I'm surprisingly angry at Microsoft and am actually thinking of jumping ship.

For years, I've been either listening to my whole music collection (about 15 gb) on shuffle or listening to a comedian who makes short sketches in mp3 format which I have in excess of 1500 of. Now I can't do that because there's a lame 100 song limit in the queue. I'm stuck using the Music Hub Tile for this.

Album art is missing (album sleeves, etc.) after I spent HOURS organizing my collection (which both iOS and Android recognize without any problem) and of top of that, I used Windows Media Player to do it! But XBox Music doesn't see it properly or changes it! What the hell?

When you start the app and go to the artists list or album list, it still takes nearly a minute to list them all.

And I repeat, I've never had problems with any of this on either iOS or Android. Android didn't properly recognize special characters like French accents for example. But otherwise, no problem.

I know XBox Music will get better. But they should have waited until it was actually done before releasing it! It's on the store, it's not just because it's a developer preview! They're just contributing to the negative image Microsoft has and, unfortunately, they're hard to defend

This! I spent countless hours of tagging my music properly through MediaMonkey only to find out that Xbox Music likes to change metadata!!! Arrgh, so frustrating! I don't know what database Xbox music uses to lookup ID3 tags, but it is absolutely rubbish. This is why they need to implement an option to toggle metadata lookup like they have on the desktop apps. Zune had an option like this as well, however incorrect metadata changes were not that significant. If I'm not mistaken, up till Xbox music was implemented, the metadata database they were using was standard across all Microsoft platforms (WMP, Zune, Media Center, etc.) - I have a image I'll upload later to show this difference.

I also spent about 4 hours last night on the web Xbox music site deleting all of my cloud collection (~670 albums). Having the phone app sync your cloud collection is such a waste if you're not a subscriber. My cloud collection was such a mess anyway, so I'm not gonna miss it. (Not going to open the desktop Xbox music app since I use Zune still) - so I wont have to worry about the cloud collection anymore.

What is this MS??? Com'on!

 

[themadpoet1]

I feel your pain, it's frustrating and angering to spend so much time keeping your collection organized only for MS to screw it all up with their cloud-overriding the meta-data.

I realize this app is beta, and that's why I'm willing to give them a chance to fix it. But I don't believe they will because they never fixed it on Xbox Music with Windows 8. I still have messed up/wrong album covers on the Windows 8 version and nothing I can do about it.

 

[jaY1929]

Hey guys, while on your headphones have you notice or experience that every time you receive/get a notification while listening to music, after the alert tone the sound stops working on the right channel and need to restart the phone to fix it.

Has this happen to you??

 

[airslap]

Music App - Albums not showing.

Hey does anyone have a problem with the new music app with some albums no longer appearing or being recognised? The files are there and on windows phone 8 they were recognised. I've tried switching between the phone and streaming and sd sections but the a few albums for some reason are hidden. Any suggestions or ideas?

 

[dlalonde]

Will One Music have a persistent nav bar like iOS Music app? To me lack of this is a dealbreaker.

Wow! This looks amazing! Did you decide how you would fund it? (ads, paying app, free)

 

[drlacus]

Ok guys! You are going to love this. I have cleared all my music collection to organize it a bit and after I recopied my albums, the ones which were previously on my phone did not have their album art. Deleting them again and resynchronizing did not make any change, still no album art. But here comes the FUN part.

I have created a new folder in the phone's music folder, in my case it was "this is a fuc*ing joke" and copied my albums into this folder. You know what? The album arts reappeared and I was like, da hell man?

 

[Philippe Maes]

Wow! This looks amazing! Did you decide how you would fund it? (ads, paying app, free)

Thanks! I will start with a paid app and depending on its success I will probably release an ad supported version later on.

 

[Guzzler3]

Hey guys/gals, if you are really frustrated with streaming music showing up in your music collection I found another way to clear it out.

First, in the XBM on your windows 8.x computer(s) turn off "Cloud Collection" in the Preferences settings and wait awhile for it kick in.

Then! Go to Web interface of Xbox Music (music.xbox.com) and sign in with your Microsoft Account. There you will see all the matched, purchased, music from your various devices, playlists, etc. From there you can manage your stuff, delete stuff, create playlists, etc.

Personally, I haven't purchased any music from Microsoft, and everything up there was matched from my personal collection. So I decided to delete EVERYTHING (it took awhile clicking on every 'trash can' icon and hitting enter on each song).

If you purchased songs from Microsoft... I don't think I you should go deleting things. You might lose your songs you bought forever. But for those of us who haven't bought anything... it's an option.

P.S.
Although it is nice to have a web interface to play your music while away from any of your devices.

 

[colinkiama]

Hey guys/gals, if you are really frustrated with streaming music showing up in your music collection I found another way to clear it out.

First, in the XBM on your windows 8.x computer turn off "Cloud Collection" in the Preferences settings and wait awhile for it kick in.

Then! Go to Web interface of Xbox Music (music.xbox.com) and sign in with your Microsoft Account. There you will see all the matched, purchased, music from your various devices, playlists, etc. From there you can manage your stuff, delete stuff, create playlists, etc.

Personally, I haven't purchased any music from Microsoft, and everything up there was matched from my personal collection. So I decided to delete EVERYTHING (it took awhile clicking on every 'trash can' icon and hitting enter on each song).

If you purchased songs from Microsoft... I don't think I you should go deleting things. You might lose your songs you bought forever. But for those of us who haven't bought anything... it's an option.

P.S.
Although it is nice to have a web interface to play your music while away from any of your devices.

There is an option in the settings menu on Xbox music to remove streaming music from the music collection lol