Discovered how to make Xbox Music (WP8.1) show artist images/bio/album arts!

[alinauman97]

Ah, okay--that's a complicated task for me, since I sync my music from a PC with Windows 7 (by way of WMP--I'm not sure if that's a liability or a blessing). Do you mind if I ask a few questions before I attempt this?

Namely, I don't want to have useless "streamed music" duplicates in my music list just to add artist data to a few songs. Wouldn't doing this mean I'll have duplicates of all of my music? Or would the artist data only be available for the songs streamed?

(Yeah, these never gets less complicated.)

No. You wont see duplicates unless there is a mismatch between your local collection and the Xbox catalogue. You don't even have to enable streaming music to see the backgrounds etc.

 

[alinauman97]

Your method worked for the only problem is background images of most artists in my local collection don't display... Only album art does

It only displays backgrounds of mainstream artists. If the ones you have on your phone aren't well known, they wont have a background.

 

[noersetiawan]

What if Xbox music isn't available in your country?

 

[Yaw Agyei]

It only displays backgrounds of mainstream artists. If the ones you have on your phone aren't well known, they wont have a background.

Ok then I guess that's why most of the backgrounds aren't showing but it still ain't cool

 

[alinauman97]

What if Xbox music isn't available in your country?

I'm in Pakistan and Xbox Music's not available here either. I have my Xbox and Microsoft account, as well as phone's regions all set to United States.

 

[Desynthesis]

To resurrect this thread from the dead, it appears Microsoft removed this functionality, at least in the United States. They really don't want you using Xbox Music if you're not buying music. :eck:

 

[alinauman97]

To resurrect this thread from the dead, it appears Microsoft removed this functionality, at least in the United States. They really don't want you using Xbox Music if you're not buying music. :eck:

Are you referring to artist backgrounds?

 

[Desynthesis]

Are you referring to artist backgrounds?

Yes (which I acknowledge is a cosmetic and minor function complaint). If there's a way to add unpurchased music from the Xbox Music library to your phone (or rather, a 30 second clip of it) from Windows 8.1, I don't know what it is. Also, trying to do so from Xbox Music on your phone itself simply doesn't do anything--nothing is added.

It's too bad, as this was my go-to method for adding info/artwork for artists on my phone (for example, I have a Danny Elfman song on my phone, and even though Xbox Music sells his music, it doesn't sell this song, and doesn't recognize his name), since MPATool was rendered obsolete.

 

[alinauman97]

You can get that artist's images on your phone. Just go to the Get music screen on your phone, and search for the artist. On the artist page, tap the play button on any of his albums. Once on the Now Playing screen, tap the three dots button on the bottom and then tap "Add to", followed by "Collection". This adds that specific album to your cloud collection. Going to the artist's page on your phone may show a background now. Could take a couple of tries to get it right, though.

 

[Desynthesis]

Thank you for the suggestion, but that doesn't work for me anymore--I tried 5 times with different Danny Elfman albums to "link" a Danny Elfman song that was on my phone, and it made no difference. At least for me, that functionality's gone (I'm on a Lumia 830, for what it's worth). Nothing was added--nothing to even suggest that the function "Add to..." does anything (looks much more like a dead function that's on its way to being removed).

To be honest, even if it did work, it's only fixing half the problem. I have artists who have the correct artwork, but if you play a given song, they're missing artwork (as is the live tile). I'm fairly certain that Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, have decided to bind artist artwork to the individual song (so it varies between multiple songs to the same artist).

The only surefire way to fix this, I find, is to buy the song from Microsoft themselves--which I have resorted to. I'm not going to pay $100 for a year of Xbox Music because I know, a week after I did, a patch would hit Xbox Music that would break that as well. Not to mention it does nothing about artists not in the Xbox Music library.

What are you going to do? :eck:

 

[alinauman97]

Yeah, I tried the "Add to..." feature recently, and it no longer works for me. As for the Live Tile, it never worked for my local music (even if it was matched with Xbox Music catalogue), it only works if you're streaming from Xbox Music. And honestly, I don't know what I'm going to do! :|

 

[Desynthesis]

Yeah, I tried the "Add to..." feature recently, and it no longer works for me. As for the Live Tile, it never worked for my local music (even if it was matched with Xbox Music catalogue), it only works if you're streaming from Xbox Music. And honestly, I don't know what I'm going to do! :|

I'm switching to Zbox once it offers album sorting by album artist (instead of just artist).

I've actually updated all my music in ID3 (rather than WMP's own standard) over the holiday.

Not a great solution, but yeah..

 

[Desynthesis]

Doublepost warning.

Yeah, I tried the "Add to..." feature recently, and it no longer works for me. As for the Live Tile, it never worked for my local music (even if it was matched with Xbox Music catalogue), it only works if you're streaming from Xbox Music. And honestly, I don't know what I'm going to do! :|

Alinauman, you may want to try this out if you haven't already. Try using an ID3 tag editor (TagScanner or even just the Windows interface) to set an artist as it appears in the store. I did this with all my Weird Al Yankovic songs as an experiment, and found it worked remarkably well--in this case, perfectly, linking all my music to the artist page on the music store.

It's not flawless (Danny Elfman is still strangely absent), but I was using TagScanner to organize all my music anyway. WMP just syncs based on the information you add, but editing the actual tags and using the Windows Phone app to sync produces a very different result.

(And it's better than buying a song and hoping for the best.)

 

[alinauman97]

Surprisingly, today, as I was trying to add a Ellie Goulding song to my collection to get the artist background, it didn't work. Then I just enabled the "Connect to streaming music" setting and then tried to add that album to my collection. I now have her background!

 

[Desynthesis]

Surprisingly, today, as I was trying to add a Ellie Goulding song to my collection to get the artist background, it didn't work. Then I just enabled the "Connect to streaming music" setting and then tried to add that album to my collection. I now have her background!

Yeah, that seems like a pretty mandatory prerequisite--mine has always been on (as I do own a handful of songs purchased from Microsoft) when I was trying to fix the various bugs and issues.

ID3 tag editing seems to be the way to go. Until Zbox starts sorting albums by album artist anyway.

 

[SufalDas]

Hey..man I can't see background images..i did every step perfectly but still background image of artists is not showing! Can anyone help me..(I have latest version of Xbox music)

 

[BataBole]

Guys, in case you didn't know. The best way to get real metadata for Xbox music app is to use Zune on your PC. Update your music collection through Zune and transfer it to your phone and artist pictures will be there. Zune and Xbox music are using similar (if not the same) metadata, so its the best way to get your album covers and artist backgrounds.

P.S. Sometimes you'll have to use MP3 tag editor to stick album covers cuz they just won't to appear on phone.

 

[SufalDas]

I'd already used tag editor and CoFeed..but nothing happened! Previously all I have to Do is add any song to collection and boom artist image automatically start to showing...but now this trick isn't working after all! Another thing is that I did notice some artist picture in live tile(The Script) other artists is not showing in live tile.

 

[Desynthesis]

Guys, in case you didn't know. The best way to get real metadata for Xbox music app is to use Zune on your PC. Update your music collection through Zune and transfer it to your phone and artist pictures will be there. Zune and Xbox music are using similar (if not the same) metadata, so its the best way to get your album covers and artist backgrounds.

P.S. Sometimes you'll have to use MP3 tag editor to stick album covers cuz they just won't to appear on phone.

Interesting--I was using ID3 Tag, and that did a much better job of it than Windows Media Player, but I may install Zune on my Windows 8 PC (I still have a ZuneHD sitting around). I've got a few famous artist who are still missing tile art (but they have information/bios/etc.) when I play their songs. I doubt Zune will show anything that ID3Tagging software didn't though...

 

[Justin Sequeira]

How do you get the Xbox Music app? All I have is the Music app, not the Xbox one?

Please help?!