Holy crap, syncing with WP8 is a trainwreck.

[vedichymn]

I was a pretty happy and enthusiastic Windows Phone 7 user. The Zune software worked great for keeping my PC & phone in sync.

I picked up a Lumia 920 on Friday, and good god, I don't understand how anyone thought the new sync process was a good idea.

I listen to a bunch of podcasts on both a Windows 8 pc and phone and have a mix of my own music and music downloaded via the Zune/Xbox music pass that I want to keep synced to my phone. This is a subset of my entire music library.

As far as I can tell with my 920 and the new sync apps, my options are:

1. Use the desktop app with iTunes to manage my podcasts and music and then figure out how to get music pass downloads to my phone, although it seems like this is going to either leave me with a bunch of crap I don't want on the phone, or a bunch of crap missing.
   
2. Manually manage syncing stuff, using a hodgepodge of on phone/on pc apps.

#1 might be ok, except the desktop software crashes constantly, so I can't actually sync anything to my phone. I tried the native Windows 8 phone app, but it's even more limited than the desktop version.

Why did they rid of the Zune software, if THIS is what they had to replace it? Is there something that I'm missing?

 

[Trocien]

I am literally going through the same hardship right now. All I want is to sync all my xbox pass music to my phone. I find a way to do it using the Desktop Windows Phone 8 App ( I dont know why the Metro Windows Phone 8 app doesnt have this feature)

The problem is when I use the desktop app, all the music I sync gets an error message saying "We cannot find the medial rights for this content"

And yes, I did verify that my Lumia 920 is authorized with my Xbox Music Pass.

 

[vedichymn]

I am literally going through the same hardship right now. All I want is to sync all my xbox pass music to my phone. I find a way to do it using the Desktop Windows Phone 8 App ( I dont know why the Metro Windows Phone 8 app doesnt have this feature)

The problem is when I use the desktop app, all the music I sync gets an error message saying "We cannot find the medial rights for this content"

And yes, I did verify that my Lumia 920 is authorized with my Xbox Music Pass.

Do they show up if you turn on the Xbox Music Cloud Collection option on the phone? SOME of my stuff showed up when that was enabled, but not all of it, so I have no idea what the criteria is for ending as part of the cloud collection. I suspect that feature doesn't quite work at the moment.

 

[Trocien]

Yeah, when I have the Music Cloud collection on, they all show up for streaming. The issue comes when I try to sync those same songs that I downloaded.

However, all of my music is from xbox music pass so my situation might be slightly different.

Wow do I miss zune right now.....never thought I would say that.

 

[Tyresian]

You can subscribe and manage podcasts right from the phone. Heck you can manage pretty much every thing from the phone, which is what I prefer to do. You shouldn't really need to ever connect to a computer.

I haven't tried Xbox Music yet, but I'll try.

 

[vedichymn]

You can subscribe and manage podcasts right from the phone. Heck you can manage pretty much every thing from the phone, which is what I prefer to do. You shouldn't really need to ever connect to a computer.

I haven't tried Xbox Music yet, but I'll try.

That's true, but that's not what I want to do.

I've been digging more to find out what the desktop software is doing when you sync podcasts, it's doing something special to mark podcasts when you sync from iTunes vs. just copying the files down locally.

In general, the sync software is super buggy and missing a lot of the features from the Zune software.

 

[awesomeplant]

You can subscribe and manage podcasts right from the phone. Heck you can manage pretty much every thing from the phone, which is what I prefer to do. You shouldn't really need to ever connect to a computer.

I haven't tried Xbox Music yet, but I'll try.

Almost happy with that, buuut I have some music that is not available on the Xbox Music store.

Secondly, while I can select a cloud album and download all tracks right from the phone, I have to download tracks in a playlist individually. That would get me at least half-way to what I need...

 

[jwinch2]

My windows phone desktop software gets about 70% through syncing my iTunes and then it crashes. It won't pull in my pictures at all. Its a real problem, particularly since there don't seem to be any third party apps that will do it better. Android had multiple choices, but so far, none seem ready for WP8. Hopefully that changes soon.

 

[anon(5324511)]

Yea, I am having issues to!! I just gave up on it! Instead, I removed Zune and all of the music I had with it and just re-did about 250 songs today, purely on the xBox music...without downloading and just will stream it because downloading and syncing to the phone just does not work between my W8 and WP8!!!! Also what is odd is if I download a song on my phone, it never shows up to stream on my pc xbox music and if I try to sync that way...same issue DRM!!!!! =)

I am going with a if it doesn't get fixed soon then I'll just cancel the pass...I can't go streaming music all day without a wifi connection lol!!

Just to add, it feels like Microsoft with all of their improvements with Zune, trashed that and brought back their MSN music which was nothing but a train wreck until Zune came along!

 

[red grenadine]

It's a complete and utter trainwreck.

The W8 Music and Windows Phone sync apps are the two worst-designed pieces of software I have ever seen. I quit using an iPhone due to iTunes being awful, this is making me reconsider my decision to switch to WP. This setup is worse than iTunes right now and it makes me sick.

 

[awesomeplant]

While I'm upset to think I might have been better off holding on to WP7.5 a little longer, I remember the first Zune software release was pretty rough too. Its clear this is little more than a file manager and not the final solution but I have no doubt they are much farther along than this software conveys. They probably just had to pull the switch and release barebones at launch day because the final solution isn't ready yet.

Right Microsoft?

Even then, WMP + podcast features built into the phone will get me by... Never will I crawl back to Mr. Potter.... I mean iTunes.

 

[jwinch2]

I'm going to convert all of my iTunes files to MP3s and load them into WMP and see if that makes it easier to sync. I certainly hope so. Now, if someone will just give us a player on the actual phone that goes into landscape mode for driving purposes, we will have one more than taken care of. I can't believe microsoft doesn't just give a media player app on the phone.

 

[ncxcstud]

Can't you just bypass the app and just drag and drop? that's what I did...

I loved the Zune desktop software. I hope the WP8 Connection program builds back into that.

 

[Loiselle]

I don't use the new WP8 toll for Win 7. I just use the file manager option. Drag and drop. No issues whatsoever. Makes pulling pictures off a **** of a lot easier than it was with Zune. "Plug in phone>Run Zune Software>(pictures sync to PC)>go to folder..." It got old, and annoying. I don't sync pictures to SkyDrive because I like having them on my local PC. So, the drag and drop method is so awesome now.

 

[Trocien]

I called Customer Service and they have been getting a lot of calls on this issue and they said that it should most likely be resolved in the next update.

Fingers crossed...

 

[garak0410]

My XBOX Music Issues:

No way to sync a playlist that has XBOX music Pass songs.
The cloud music is a complete mess. Can't get a newly created playlist to appear across devices. Playlists are all over the map.
Album art is spotty at best from music I copy to the device from the app. If I download straight to the phone via my music pass, album art is fine.
And did I mention playlists with XBOX music songs will not sync via WMP?

 

[vedichymn]

Can't you just bypass the app and just drag and drop? that's what I did...

I loved the Zune desktop software. I hope the WP8 Connection program builds back into that.

No, because I don't want to end up manually managing syncing up 20 podcasts and thousands of songs.

And manually syncing podcasts doesn't work anyway, they show up as music.

I just find it crazy that the thing that drove me from using the Zune software to iTunes was Windows Phone 8.

 

[jasqid]

I thought 8 was to be magical?

So WP8 and W8 don't play nice together? Great.

 

[red grenadine]

It is absurd. I am quite upset about this.

 

[tk-093]

A update is out for the tool today.

Microsoft updates Windows Phone 8 PC sync client with improvements | Windows Phone Central