Music Management Help!

[OptimusDims]

Sorry if this has been discussed elsewhere but I couldnt find anything that helped.

I picked up an 8X today and was really disappointed by the music management as it feels like a massive regression from Zune. When i installed the desktop app (for win7) it brought in all my music that was in zune and other locations. The problem is that is displays everything in artist order with no option to change this. This makes the transfer of any compilation albums impossible - I'm hoping that I'm missing somerthing here...

Aside from using the explorer and dragging and dropping is there another way to manage the music for my WP8? Zune was the ideal play/store/managment tool.

 

[swanny78]

Ive just posted a similar post. I also can't seem to play any zune pass music transferred to phone from my pc to phone says something like "cant obtain licence information for this media content" then just refuses to play.

 

[nizzon]

I was afraid of this.
MS is focusing too much on these damn streaming services that they forget to improve the MP3-features.

 

[AaHaa]

I find this kind of unsettling. I love to manage my music. Every little details has to be right (composers, high-res album art, every word should be spelled with a capital letter except for "a", "the", etcetera...) in my music library and Zune is the perfect application to do that with... I kinda hoped it would just get renamed to Xbox Music. I don't want to lose my ability to waste time tidying up my music!

 

[swanny78]

I think the only way at this stage to ensure you music is arranged properly is to upgrade to windows 8. The windows 7 sync app is poor to say the least.

 

[awesomeplant]

Xbox Music on Windows 8 is really missing so much of what Zune brought. Auto-playlists and podcasts are gone, unless I'm missing something.

When I created a playlist on Xbox Music in Windows 8 it showed up, but when I synced the same playlist using the Windows Phone software (was trying to get the files physically on the phone so I could go for a jog without streaming my playlist), it created a duplicate playlist instead of updating the phone's copy. It's the same playlist!!!

I also had the problem with compilation albums, or at least *a* problem. Basically, one song on a compilation album apparently also appeared on a various artist album, and now the entire album by a single artist is being attributed to that other album. This was never a problem in Zune, and when I look at the file info, everything looks correct.

I'm soooooo sick to the stomach to even consider this, but I think the best "music management" solution right now is to run (gulp) iTunes and sync manually with the Windows 8 WP app. If anyone has an alternative that gets me auto-playlists, podcasts, correct artist/album data, and no duplicate playlists, I'll be so happy to be wrong.

 

[vdubskey]

I also think Xbox Music is a large step backwards from Zune. I actually had to turn off the auto download album art and turn off the cloud feature because it was breaking up my albums and using the wrong album art.

Example. The artist Dance Gavin Dance album Happiness has 3 tracks that are also on a compilation album. So those 3 songs get different covers, meta data and now are separate entries in my catalog.

So now that I turned those features off my albums are like I want but no album art! Does anyone know what filename it looks for local album art? I tried folder.jpg but doesn't work.

 

[OptimusDims]

I dont get why there is no phone sync on xbox music app in win8? I was talking to a win support guy yetserday and he even said that he prefers zune and a lot have people have said that the syncing is not good. Hopefully ms will take note

I also dont get why if the album artwork is showing up on the folder even after its been transferred to the phone on the transfer app but doesnt appear on the phone.

 

[parshi4500]

I don't know about the actual reason... But I am facing the same problem..

 

[AaHaa]

So... I think I read it somewhere, but I might have forgotten it: is it possible to sync your Windows Phone 8 with Zune on a Windows 7 desktop? 'Cause if that's the case I'll just keep using Windows 7 with Zune and wait for Microsoft to improve Xbox Music

 

[IEvil IMonkey]

So... I think I read it somewhere, but I might have forgotten it: is it possible to sync your Windows Phone 8 with Zune on a Windows 7 desktop? 'Cause if that's the case I'll just keep using Windows 7 with Zune and wait for Microsoft to improve Xbox Music

Nope this isn't the case. I've got Zune running and my WP8 plugged in and at no time does it detect the phone

 

[Jay Bennett]

So I picked up my HTC 8X last night to discover the horrific situation Microsoft has left us in regarding music management. However I do have a tiny beacon of hope for you guys:

You can sync music with Windows Media Player, album art, individual songs, and everything.

That doesn't solve every problem with Xbox Music but it does at least mean you can sync individual songs and set conversion if you want to compress your music. So it leaves you with just a few more problems:

1) Zune pass content won't play on WP8, you'll have to sync it to the phone, let it "cloud match" then delete everything from your phone and re-download the cloud matched versions
2) Lots of content will cloud match incorrectly, leaving you with duplicates in your library, which is maddening to say the least. You'll need to delete the stuff from your phone, then download the cloud matched versions to get rid of duplicates

One more tip I can pass on after fighting the last night, when you're viewing an album or list of songs, you can filter by "all", "phone" or "cloud collection" (similar to how your can filter social stories by facebook, twitter etc). If you switch this to the phone collection and then tap "select" in the application bar, it makes it easier to delete things from your library. There's also a handy "select all" option in the application bar (3 dot/elipsis menu) which can save you a lot of time.

In the long run, once you've cloud matched and organised your music I can see this being a good system, you'll have all your library available and can just delete your local downloaded versions or download from the cloud as you see fit, managing the collection entirely on the device (great for 16GB memory amounts).
But for now, this transisition period is going to be hellish. I will try and organise my thoughts about this properly and get a How-To article up when I can find the time to write one!

 

[thirdsun]

I have a long history with Apple, using Macs only, having an iPad and and used every iPhone since the 3G. Now I opted for the Lumia 920, simply because I love the flat Metro design and value these things so much that it would justify the switch.

While I didn't expect (or wished for) a full blown iTunes alternative for WP8 on a mac, the media management is just awful. Let me say that I regard iTunes as a necessary evil - I don't buy music there at all as I only go for lossless, I don't appreciate their proprietary album artwork storing method and don't rely on iTunes to tag my music. I keep my library very organized, with correctly tagged albums and embedded artworks (as opposed to the iTunes way). However, all things considered, iTunes generally works quite well.

Now that I set up my new Lumia I just have to wonder what's going on with Microsoft - My synced music either doesn't show any artwork and artist photos at all or it gets screwed up by Microsoft's attempt to update the meta data. In my case, there are several albums that get divided into 2 albums after syncing because of lower-/uppercase differences in the album title (particularly happens with "the/The" in the title). I checked back with my original meta tags and they are consistent within the involved albums, so the mismatch seems to happen after the sync.

Is there a way to use my already clean and tagged meta data and still have album artwork and artist information/pictures?

On a sidenote, what's the use of a lightweight connector app on the mac if at the end of the day you still have to rely on iTunes and in the process have to deal with various sources of errors? I don't even want to imagine how this will work when iTunes 11 comes at the end of the month. How can a big player like Microsoft make a third-party application like iTunes a requirement rather than an option?

Anyway, has anyone come up with more information on the meta data issue? Is there anything I should beware of if I want to get a clean library on my phone?

Thanks

 

[sketchy9]

Just picked up a Lumia 920. Love the phone, it's fast! Absolutely HATE HATE HATE the music "management". I had three different WP7 phones and they all synced flawlessly with Zune. Whenever I got a new one I just added my sync playlist and I was ready to go. This is such an absolute disaster on WP8. I feel like I'm back in the days of Windows Mobile. MS has to fix this, this is really unacceptable.

-R

 

[Jay Bennett]

Thirdsun, use media player, it syncs across the metadata correctly

 

[fardream]

I have a long history with Apple, using Macs only, having an iPad and and used every iPhone since the 3G. Now I opted for the Lumia 920, simply because I love the flat Metro design and value these things so much that it would justify the switch.



While I didn't expect (or wished for) a full blown iTunes alternative for WP8 on a mac, the media management is just awful. Let me say that I regard iTunes as a necessary evil - I don't buy music there at all as I only go for lossless, I don't appreciate their proprietary album artwork storing method and don't rely on iTunes to tag my music. I keep my library very organized, with correctly tagged albums and embedded artworks (as opposed to the iTunes way). However, all things considered, iTunes generally works quite well.



Now that I set up my new Lumia I just have to wonder what's going on with Microsoft - My synced music either doesn't show any artwork and artist photos at all or it gets screwed up by Microsoft's attempt to update the meta data. In my case, there are several albums that get divided into 2 albums after syncing because of lower-/uppercase differences in the album title (particularly happens with "the/The" in the title). I checked back with my original meta tags and they are consistent within the involved albums, so the mismatch seems to happen after the sync.



Is there a way to use my already clean and tagged meta data and still have album artwork and artist information/pictures?



On a sidenote, what's the use of a lightweight connector app on the mac if at the end of the day you still have to rely on iTunes and in the process have to deal with various sources of errors? I don't even want to imagine how this will work when iTunes 11 comes at the end of the month. How can a big player like Microsoft make a third-party application like iTunes a requirement rather than an option?



Anyway, has anyone come up with more information on the meta data issue? Is there anything I should beware of if I want to get a clean library on my phone?



Thanks

I believe you need to reedit your meta data again in windows media player and/or Zune.....

 

[mikewp]

So I picked up my HTC 8X last night to discover the horrific situation Microsoft has left us in regarding music management. However I do have a tiny beacon of hope for you guys:

You can sync music with Windows Media Player, album art, individual songs, and everything.

That doesn't solve every problem with Xbox Music but it does at least mean you can sync individual songs and set conversion if you want to compress your music. So it leaves you with just a few more problems:

1) Zune pass content won't play on WP8, you'll have to sync it to the phone, let it "cloud match" then delete everything from your phone and re-download the cloud matched versions
2) Lots of content will cloud match incorrectly, leaving you with duplicates in your library, which is maddening to say the least. You'll need to delete the stuff from your phone, then download the cloud matched versions to get rid of duplicates

One more tip I can pass on after fighting the last night, when you're viewing an album or list of songs, you can filter by "all", "phone" or "cloud collection" (similar to how your can filter social stories by facebook, twitter etc). If you switch this to the phone collection and then tap "select" in the application bar, it makes it easier to delete things from your library. There's also a handy "select all" option in the application bar (3 dot/elipsis menu) which can save you a lot of time.

In the long run, once you've cloud matched and organised your music I can see this being a good system, you'll have all your library available and can just delete your local downloaded versions or download from the cloud as you see fit, managing the collection entirely on the device (great for 16GB memory amounts).
But for now, this transisition period is going to be hellish. I will try and organise my thoughts about this properly and get a How-To article up when I can find the time to write one!

Good post. I fought with my phone and Windows 8 all day yesterday. It all started with having triplicate copies of playlists on my phone. 2 were empty and couldn't be deleted. I started off my resetting my phone and that didn't fix the problem. Ultimately, I got into my library, cleaned it up and reorganized things. Deleted all the playlists I could find from Windows media player and on the hard drive and from the phone (that could be deleted). It was an all day affair that I finally called "finished" at about 8pm. Windows Media Player is what to use to build playlists. It seems that the Windows Phone app has the capability, but it doesn't work. right now, that app seems to be fairly useless, but I'm confident that things will only get better. I'll start looking into cloud matching in the future, but I'm just goint to savor my small victory at this point lol.

 

[rybob1]

I went through via media player and updated some of the meta data - actually specifically genre, and I'm not seeing the changes on my WP8 device. Any special trick to get it to sync again? Phone is connected and the metro app is launched after updating genre info.

 

[RedDawn]

I just copy my mp3's straight to the music folder on the phone through Windows Explorer. As long as they are tagged properly its great. I am glad I don't have to sync with a program anymore.

 

[pdskep]

I just copy my mp3's straight to the music folder on the phone through Windows Explorer. As long as they are tagged properly its great. I am glad I don't have to sync with a program anymore.

Drag and drop is nice. What is also nice is being able to create playlists, manage your music and metadata effeciently. Fortunately there is a way around it with WMP, but there's no reason why the XBox Music and WP Sync apps should suck so badly. This is a travesty!!