8.1 Developer Preview Everything Music Thread

[jmart1]

I am having a ton of problems with Xbox Music on my Lumia 928 with 8.1.

Even though I had it enabled, the artist doesn't show up on my lock screen for the song I am listening to. At one point I disabled it and renabled it, and it work for a few songs, but it stopped soon after.

When I shuffle all my songs, it seems to only play the same 30 or 40 in a continuous loop.

I haven't been able to download new songs through the store in about 4 days. I keep getting a "Can't sign in. Try again later" message. Soft reset doesn't change anything.

#Note: I do have an active Music Pass and all of the songs were acquired through the Music Store.

 

[fallback]

It's been mentioned plenty of times on uservoice, as well as their own answer forums. And again, it happens all the time - as long as one tester has listened to 1.01 songs at least once, they know about it. (It seems like a time-honored tradition, where every time they rewrite a music system from scratch, they mess up song transitions (in addition to dropping features. ))

I know right, it's like a bitter sweet kind of feeling. Well I've heard this issue is non-existent to other OEMs running 8.1 so maybe after Cyan Update rolls out this would get fixed. So probably I might just wait til then and hopefully it gets fixed : ]

 

[tapehead]

How do you guys feel about Microsoft shipping the 630 with the music app the way it is. The whole "it's a preeeevviieiww uu guys omg its beta sofftware" excuse has officially expired.

 

[TheRotfler]

How do you guys feel about Microsoft shipping the 630 with the music app the way it is. The whole "it's a preeeevviieiww uu guys omg its beta sofftware" excuse has officially expired.

Game, set, match.

 

[Localhorst86]

How do you guys feel about Microsoft shipping the 630 with the music app the way it is. The whole "it's a preeeevviieiww uu guys omg its beta sofftware" excuse has officially expired.

I actually never accepted that excuse. Not for a simple core app like a music player. For the first time since I adopted Windows phone in 2011 I seriously feel this could break MSFTs neck in the mobile market. You cannot ship a phone with such an abysmal music experience. Playing music is a core function of a mobile device, the new music app can't even get that right. It doesn't even deserve the name "music app".

Every buyer of the 630 is going to be disappointed and stumped by this app and I actually doubt MSFT will be able to bring back even a half decent music experience until 8.1 officially shops to existing phones.

If MSFT is even incapable of producing or shipping an acceptable music experience, how can we expect the OS to be any better?

 

[Jack Janik]

I think what stings most, is that the Xbox Music app on Android and iOS is updated more frequently when they don't need it like we do.

 

[tapehead]

Microsoft really doesn't know what it's doing. I feel like Joe Belfiore is a little out of his depth.

 

[Noahma]

I am utterly perplexed at the condition of the apps (x-box music is a universal app)

The French team working on this needs to be fired and a new team moved in its place. This is ridiculous.

My gripes are with playlists and music match. I can create a playlist, and over time music starts listing as streaming only, the file physically exists on the drive, but it will only stream it unless I remove the app from the playlist and add it back. It goes maybe two uses and then goes back to purely streaming. This translates through to the phone as well. Songs that physically are on the phones drive show as "you do not have the rights to play this song"

FRUSTRATING is the nicest I can say.

It also takes FOREVER to sync between devices, Longest so far has been about three days to sync a playlist between my desktop and tablet, my phone seems to be random. Sometimes it does, sometimes it does not.

I do NOT want to purchase a music subscription its too damn expensive, which is seemly where they are trying to push people into.


Well... I figured out some of the issues. It seems that for some reason Xbox music was looking at music I have backed up on my Onedrive account. It was randomly switching between that and my library songs.

now to solve the phone playlist syncing stuff and I might be a tad, (just a tad) bit happier

 

[dlalonde]

I'm going to go the same way as some here. I do not understand why Microsoft released such a bad app. It's even in the store already! People are already rating it as bad giving it a bad reputation that is likely not going to be easy to get rid of when comes the final release.

A music player that does not overwrite ID3 Tags (that some of us spent hours making and are recognized by iPhone and Android), that plays music, no restriction on the number of songs that play, no gaps between songs. The bare minimum. And it can't even do that.

Not only that but if they just added gapless playback to the music hub, it would have been perfect. And from what I heard here, the Zune was perfect.

I really don't get it.

 

[flattie]

Not only that but if they just added gapless playback to the music hub, it would have been perfect. And from what I heard here, the Zune was perfect.

I really don't get it.

Not quite. The original hub was much better, but it had an abysmal method of producing playlists. It could also have used a direct link to the equaliser (and, as you say, gapless).

Still, it was very, very fast under the thumb and that was a real plus in my book.

I think this app will get there in the end. Why MS struggle so much with music apps is beyond me though. So many other companies with far less experience and resources have produced far better offerings on far weaker platforms. Local music management and playback is an easy win that any company should be looking to nail straight off the bat.

 

[Ebuka Allison]

Not quite. The original hub was much better, but it had an abysmal method of producing playlists. It could also have used a direct link to the equaliser (and, as you say, gapless).

Still, it was very, very fast under the thumb and that was a real plus in my book.

I think this app will get there in the end. Why MS struggle so much with music apps is beyond me though. So many other companies with far less experience and resources have produced far better offerings on far weaker platforms. Local music management and playback is an easy win that any company should be looking to nail straight off the bat.

As they say in some countries. do the people that made Google Play Music, Spotify, the iOS music app, the XBOX MUSIC APP for iOS and Android, do they have two heads?
Sometimes, excuses can only take you so far.
As for those who'll yell, BUUT itz Just a Previewwwwwwww guyyzzzzz, WP8.1 is out on the 630. With this "music player"

 

[dlalonde]

Well regardless of whether it's a preview or not, the fact remains that this is a standalone app and it should not have been released until it was fully ready. This looks like an alpha version of an app that does not belong in a public release (because it's also on the store even for those who don't have the developer preview). The fact that they took off the Music Hub to replace it by that is apauling.

As far as playlists go, I don't use them so I didn't know that. So better Music Hub + playlist management + gapless playback + ability to modify the artist backgrounds (without a third party app) and we would have gotten a very good music app.

 

[tapehead]

Gonna be honest, I'm switching to back Android this week over this. I buy new albums a couple times a week. It's a hobby, and I am constantly changing the music out or adding to my digital collection. This week alone I picked up three new CDs. The fact that I can't even connect my phone to the computer is bad enough. And it's worse if I do get music on there and it takes 20 minutes for Xbox Music to recognize it. I'm keeping one of my Lumias so I can track the progress, but it's absolutely shameful that Microsoft has allowed such an amateurish app to be released into the wild.

The 630 is on sale. You can go out and order online right now with this disgustingly bad music experience. This is going to ruin their brand's reputation-- at least, what remains of it.

 

[Ebuka Allison]

Gonna be honest, I'm switching to back Android this week over this. I buy new albums a couple times a week. It's a hobby, and I am constantly changing the music out or adding to my digital collection. This week alone I picked up three new CDs. The fact that I can't even connect my phone to the computer is bad enough. And it's worse if I do get music on there and it takes 20 minutes for Xbox Music to recognize it. I'm keeping one of my Lumias so I can track the progress, but it's absolutely shameful that Microsoft has allowed such an amateurish app to be released into the wild.

The 630 is on sale. You can go out and order online right now with this disgustingly bad music experience. This is going to ruin their brand's reputation-- at least, what remains of it.

It's actually pretty decent if you go to the app store and purchase or trial a decent music player app. If MS could combine all that functionality into one app. I'd be giddy. Honestly, I would have lived with the 8.0 music app. It's,not bad, all they had to do was give it a UI and performance update and link the Videos hub in. Boom, best app.
The People hub looks beautiful now, all other built in apps look awesome. The videos app is pretty nice to use, it's also fast and stable. What happened to music? I just don't get it

 

[tapehead]

Listen was one of the better ones, but it didn't work right overall.

I have to rely on Music Drop because my phone won't connect to the computer anymore for no reason at all. This means album art gets lost. MPATool no longer works, so I really didn't have another choice.

Using another music app still means the volume control window links you to the awful new app. It also doesn't auto-update for new music, so if I downloaded something from the store, it wouldn't show up.

Just too many issues and overall not worth it for me anymore.

 

[Ebuka Allison]

Listen was one of the better ones, but it didn't work right overall.

I have to rely on Music Drop because my phone won't connect to the computer anymore for no reason at all. This means album art gets lost. MPATool no longer works, so I really didn't have another choice.

Using another music app still means the volume control window links you to the awful new app. It also doesn't auto-update for new music, so if I downloaded something from the store, it wouldn't show up.

Just too many issues and overall not worth it for me anymore.

I'll wait till Friday. If they choose to add ONE feature while leaving the app crap...well...my Xbox music subscription weeks well with an Android right?

 

[Nakazul]

I just started trying a app "Extreme Music" and its a good enough music player for playing downloaded tracks. No loading time, very responsive.

 

[tapehead]

I'll wait till Friday. If they choose to add ONE feature while leaving the app crap...well...my Xbox music subscription weeks well with an Android right?

The sad thing is that the Android app has a better star rating.

 

[Ebuka Allison]

The sad thing is that the Android app has a better star rating.

And is a better app over all from what I gather...
Actually, they have a pretty serviceable app on all platforms but WP. It's not Zune, but it works

 

[tapehead]

And is a better app over all from what I gather...
Actually, they have a pretty serviceable app on all platforms but WP. It's not Zune, but it works

Which kind of proves what a pain in the rear end it is to code on this system.