Holy crap, syncing with WP8 is a trainwreck.

[Ryan Nichol]

The syncing is soo annoying i have a freakish OCD with album artwork on my songs and when i transfer them over to my lumia 820 some of the covers dont show, and some are on a tottally different song so annoying -_-

 

[Bryan_J]

I have it on good authority that the Zune player is dead at Microsoft there will be no effort put into making it work with WP8.
They are working on getting the WP8 app completed, because they want an app that will work from the app store and not require the desktop to install.

But why does it need to be a separate app in the first place? What I loved about the Zune software was that it was proficient at both managing a gigantic music collection and at keeping your device synced to whatever you changed in that collection. Why not keep the integrated music management and device sync together - it was brilliant, simple, flexible. This is garbage.

 

[Bryan_J]

Moved this from here as I didn't know whether to create a new thread and didn't want to clutter up the one it was in:
http://forums.windowscentral.com/wi...p8;-here-apps-i-use-former-iphone-4-user.html



Seems like it's some of the AAC files not showing up on the phone.

Created a new playlist in Media Monkey "Classic Rock Music" (MP3 files) and synced 3 artists and everything is showing up.

Now here is where it gets really weird. "Blondie > Dead Air > Dead Air" (Artist/Album/Song) is showing up as "Heatmiser > Dead Air > Dead Air" (A/A/S) in the Music App even though the directory is correct in the phone.

WTH?

Welcome to Xbox Music: the Metadata Apocalypse

 

[AZBrowncoat]

Welcome to Xbox Music: the Metadata Apocalypse

Looks like I will definitely be using my iPhone as a dedicated music player...was hoping to throw at least 8 gigs or so of music on the phone for "emergencies" but there is no way I want to re-rip that many songs and transcoding from lossy to lossy is just bad.

 

[drummer0294]

I have had an 822 for 2-weeks...when I got the phone I put a 16GB card in it before I fired the phone up for the first time. I am running W7 and installed the beta WP8 app. I had zero problems using the app to move music, pictures and videos to the phone. I changed a few things multiple times and still everything worked perfectly.

This week I swapped the 16GB card out for a 32GB card and then everything stopped working when I tried to sync. I formatted the card in the phone and in the desktop but the WP8 app would just give me errors. I also tried Windows Media Player to sync but it would never see the phone. Also the camera app on the phone would crash every time I took a picture with the SD card set as the storage location.

I did a hard reset of the phone with the 32GB card in it and now everything is working as it should. From my experience I would say MS/Nokia has an issue with SD cards that are not in the phone from the first startup. If anything changes I will repost but I have used the sync app a few times since the hard reset and have not had any issues.

 

[CapnPauly]

The syncing is soo annoying i have a freakish OCD with album artwork on my songs and when i transfer them over to my lumia 820 some of the covers dont show, and some are on a tottally different song so annoying -_-

Same here; I'm VERY particular about my music to the point I've downloaded my own album covers and embedded them with MP3tag, but either WinPhone, Windows Media Player, or the Sync tool have decided that some of the images and/or tags in my songs have been "updated" and that AGGRAVATES ME TO NO END.

 

[Squatting Hen]

I tried syncing last night on a Win 7 Laptop (I stated yesterday is was a XP, but I was wrong) using the Windows Phone Desktop App and iTunes. First off, we have about 50GB of music, and with the iphone we would use the option to only sync checked songs. We never used a playlist...don't care for them at all. What I had to do was group the checked songs in iTunes and create a playlist from them. I then used the "app" to sync the playlist. Everything worked, except it crashed at or after the last song.

For the other phone, I used a Win 8 desktop and WMP. It took a while initially because I had to have the library’s imported into WMP, but after that it was very simple. I just moved the songs/albums I wanted over to the sync pane and it loaded up. I also tried adding the same song twice to see what would happen, and it recognized that it was already there.

Between the two, for me, WMP was the easiest and best to manage...between the two.

For me, there is still no match for iTunes. Zune was not much better than WMP.

What I liked about iTunes, which was missing from Zune and WMP, is to simply have the option to sync only check/marked songs. With this feature, I could easily see what was on my device even with it not plugged in. All I had to do what check a box next to each song that I wanted on my device, or uncheck it if I wanted it off. So simple! There was also an option within each song to "skip when shuffling". I miss this as well. I have children’s songs and audio books in my collection and when I shuffle my songs, I do not want to hear the ABC song or a book.

Anyway, looks like I will be using WMP until MS releases something that is at least on the same lines as iTunes.

 

[Bryan_J]

What I liked about iTunes, which was missing from Zune and WMP, is to simply have the option to sync only check/marked songs. With this feature, I could easily see what was on my device even with it not plugged in. All I had to do what check a box next to each song that I wanted on my device, or uncheck it if I wanted it off. So simple! There was also an option within each song to "skip when shuffling". I miss this as well. I have children’s songs and audio books in my collection and when I shuffle my songs, I do not want to hear the ABC song or a book.

Interesting as what I am raging over losing from my Zune software was the automatic syncing (and un-syncing) of music I had checked. It was a right click but that's pretty much it. I'd right click song x, album y, groups of songs, artists, genres, etc., and tell it I want this to sync to my device and from then on, I never had to think about it. (I also never had to plug it in to my computer because of wifi sync.) If I had clicked to have genre x sync to my device and later remove some songs from that genre, it'd just autosync. If I changed metadata in that genre, it'd autosync it. WMP I agree, is manual yuck sync but Zune syncing for WP7 was absolutely incredible. The sync was almost an afterthought. (That said, I don't know what it was like to non WP7 or Zune devices.)

 

[Squatting Hen]

Interesting as what I am raging over losing from my Zune software was the automatic syncing (and un-syncing) of music I had checked. It was a right click but that's pretty much it. I'd right click song x, album y, groups of songs, artists, genres, etc., and tell it I want this to sync to my device and from then on, I never had to think about it. (I also never had to plug it in to my computer because of wifi sync.) If I had clicked to have genre x sync to my device and later remove some songs from that genre, it'd just autosync. If I changed metadata in that genre, it'd autosync it. WMP I agree, is manual yuck sync but Zune syncing for WP7 was absolutely incredible. The sync was almost an afterthought. (That said, I don't know what it was like to non WP7 or Zune devices.)

Well, then that feature was similar, that is cool. The thing I liked about iTunes is that there was a column for the check box. It was just right there, so you could easily see and change the songs. If they would just add this to WMP I would be much happier. I miss the wireless sync too from Zune.

 

[AngryDenny]

I totally agree! I thought iTunes was bad but this just doesn't work. I'm used to connecting my device to my car and using the on screen to navigate and play my music. If I can get all the music to sync to my phone then it will play, unfortunately, it's hit or miss on getting anything to sync properly. On top of that, playlist I create in W8 show up on my phone but have no music in them. I'm just so disappointed that I have to go back to using an iPod. What a mess

 

[duz]

The only thing I'm unhappy about with the sync is the fact that there isn't any WiFi sync available(yet). I have been using winamp to sync my music, and with the exception of some weird issues withe Unicode characters in id3 tags, its worked well enough to the point where I'm about to uninstall iTunes completely

 

[UKBRIT]

first sync went okay, apart from some DRM files it managed to sync all my playlists. 2nd time, constant crashes. Finally having itunes open and photos's opened, it started synching again.

Stable it is not. At least I have my music (most of it) on the phone

 

[jon_blaze_0187]

I don't like the fact that my album covers don't sync, I can't see what pics in puttin on my phone, and the wp8 client just sucks on a windows7 PC. Please bring back Zune interface

 

[Piratelooksat40]

Zune Music and the disaster that is WP8

Let me give some background. I worked for Microsoft for 17 years, so I am really a fan. Over the years I have jumped head first into all Microsoft technologies. I have a Windows Home server that hosts all of my music and pictures. I am a huge Zune fan that has a library of over 10,000 songs. Most of them are MP3's. I use playlists to manage what I want on my phone.

Naturally as soon as WP8 came out, I went and got one. I first started out with a 920 and felt it was just too big. I traded it in for an 820. I am fairly happy with most things on the phone, except how it handles music. It can only be described as a disaster. I have tried to go about this two ways and neither work at all.

First, I have a Windows 7 machine that I installed the sync software. I have a playlist that has 300 songs, all of them are MP3's or Windows Media Files with no DRM. After the sync exactly 29 songs on the playlist made it to my phone. There is no pattern as to why these 29 songs made it and the other 280 did not. I have tried this multiple time with the same result.

I then heard that Windows Phone 8 works great with Windows 8. So I have a windows 8 machine and mapped the Music folder to my Home server drive, and the Xbox music sees about 10% of the music on my server.

The net of this, is that I have not found a way to get the music and playlist that I listen to on my new Windows phone 8. I know that Microsoft changed the DRM so that Zune music downloaded but not purchased will not work with Xbox music. That in itself is just plain stupid, they want to get into the music business, and have pissed off the few fans they had. If there were an I-tunes app for my Windows phone, I would download it, and switch all of my music immediately. You know that Apple is not going to switch formats. I am almost 100% positive that in 3 years Microsoft will change formats again, because that is what they do.

If anyone has found a solution I would love to hear it. Right now here are my options:
1. Carry 2 Windows phones with me. One that is WP8 that I use for everything but music, and carry my old WP7 for music (This is what I am doing now). Hope that something comes out and they fix the crappy Xbox music.

2. Return my WP8 and go back to WP7. But who knows if the windows phone 7.8 is going to do the same thing with music?

3. Say screw it and go to an I-Phone.

I will say, if you are considering purchasing a Windows phone 8 and you use your phone for music, and have a large library, you should hold off buying a phone until they fix this mess.

 

[Letros]

Re: Zune Music and the disaster that is WP8

I'm having a similar problem, I have a playlist of 34 songs, they show up in Xbox Music W8 fine, however, ZERO show up on my phone despite the playlist name appearing. I don't understand what's the problem, they even show up fine on my Xbox...I'm guessing this is a bug

 

[fierywater]

Seems like it's some of the AAC files not showing up on the phone.

Created a new playlist in Media Monkey "Classic Rock Music" (MP3 files) and synced 3 artists and everything is showing up.

Now here is where it gets really weird. "Blondie > Dead Air > Dead Air" (Artist/Album/Song) is showing up as "Heatmiser > Dead Air > Dead Air" (A/A/S) in the Music App even though the directory is correct in the phone.

WTH?

If you go into the Music app's settings, disable "Connect with Xbox Music", and then delete your music and resync it, it should respect your ID3 tags.

Granted, this means that album artwork may or may not work and it won't try to grab any off the Internet, but I found that to be preferable to having random songs out of their proper albums. Also, Smart DJ won't work.

I really wish they had an option to just download album art without screwing with my metadata. Xbox Music is an unusable disaster right now and absolutely should not have been released in its current state.

 

[iamtim]

Re: Zune Music and the disaster that is WP8

If you search this forum (or just scan the topic list, don't even really need to search) you'll find many people are having the same problem. It's obviously a bug and if you worked for MS you probably know they wouldn't let a bug of this magnitude go on for long (*I* expect it will be fixed in the Apollo+ update). In the meantime, have you tried dragging-and-dropping through Windows Explorer on either of your machines? You won't get your playlists, but you'll at least have all your songs.

 

[iamtim]

Re: Zune Music and the disaster that is WP8

(Oh, here's something else to try: if all your music is local, non-DRM'ed music, turn off the "connect to Xbox music cloud" options in both your PC and your phone before you drag-and-drop. Or sync.)

 

[dainla]

This week I swapped the 16GB card out for a 32GB card and then everything stopped working when I tried to sync. I formatted the card in the phone and in the desktop but the WP8 app would just give me errors. I also tried Windows Media Player to sync but it would never see the phone. Also the camera app on the phone would crash every time I took a picture with the SD card set as the storage location.

I did a hard reset of the phone with the 32GB card in it and now everything is working as it should. From my experience I would say MS/Nokia has an issue with SD cards that are not in the phone from the first startup. If anything changes I will repost but I have used the sync app a few times since the hard reset and have not had any issues.

Same. it was all the card.

 

[fusioncept]

Re: Zune Music and the disaster that is WP8

I use the Desktop app for syncing to my phone. Then I use Zune as the desktop music player, and that is how I add to my ZPL playlists. The desktop app sees everything.