On-demand music streaming on W10M: A sad and sorry state of affairs

[ChanceNC]

Preface...I came back to Windows six days ago with a Lumia 650 from Cricket. It's running the production build of the Anniversary Update, version 14393.321.

I find it disgusting that there's not a single on-demand music streaming service that works "right" on this device--not even Microsoft's own Groove Music. (I find it more disgusting that Live Tiles are broken, but I covered that in my impressions post on the L650 forum)

I mean, look:

1. Groove...Without fail, if you select a playlist, or an album, or whatever to play and the songs go in the queue...playback stops after song #1. I go into the app, and find that the second track is "playing", and the scrubber is all the way at the end of the song. I have to tap the song in the queue to get it to play. After that, playback continues as normal. Also...why are an inordinate number albums marred by missing tracks that are present on other streaming services? Example: Why in the world would one track from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' "Southern Accents" not be available for streaming? It's track #7, "Dogs on the Run". It was co-written by Petty and bandmate Mike Campbell. No other track on the album has this songwriting credit, so I can only guess that's the reason. But why am I able to play it on Spotify and Deezer? Is MSFT's rights acquisition really that weak? Microsoft likes to boast about their library but, frankly, it ain't no better--and in many cases is worse--than the libraries of their competitors.

2. Spotify. First strike: it's not a Windows 10/universal app. Strike two: Occasionally states, on launch, some nonsense about inability to launch the audio application and app restart is required. Reboot of device required to fix. Strike three: Frequently claims "Spotify is offline", even though the device is obviously connected either to WiFi or LTE. Close and reopen once or twice, and it resolves. Why does the app work fine on my ages old Lumia 928 running WP8.1? Ridiculous.

3. Deezer. Tried this morning to take advantage of the Cricket offer of $6/month for a Premium+ subscription. Cricket website happily reports they'll relieve me of this money monthly beginning with my next billing, and lets me know to register my device with Deezer. Fat chance on that...seventeen attempts to register my phone number with them later, even Deezer has me convinced that my number is invalid. Contacting Cricket via chat was a runaround...and an email to Deezer may or may not get a response. At this point...who knows, who cares. To its credit, the app actually appears to be pretty decent and is built for Windows 10. But it's no good to me without the premium subscription.

A lot of this is just sour persimmons and venting, but the suckiness of services and/or apps on W10M is real, and has me >< this close to going back to Verizon on my old Moto X on a prepaid plan and throwing my 650 against a brick wall, simply for the anger release. I thought I could deal with this platform's shortcomings in the interest of cost savings, both on phone service and on the device up front, but I'm just about ready to throw in the towel not even a week later. I thought I'd last at least a month before getting fully fed up. That's sad.

 

[Summer_Moon]

Your Groove experience is not normal. I use Groove a lot and it never does that track thing to me (used to have issues, but have long since been fixed). I'm not sure on the whole library thing but that sounds odd too... I know this is usually something that people hate hearing, but have you tried a hard reset and start over fresh? (don't restore from backup)

 

[ChanceNC]

Your Groove experience is not normal. I use Groove a lot and it never does that track thing to me (used to have issues, but have long since been fixed). I'm not sure on the whole library thing but that sounds odd too... I know this is usually something that people hate hearing, but have you tried a hard reset and start over fresh? (don't restore from backup)

Thanks for your reply. As if to prove me wrong, I queued up "Full Moon Fever" a little while ago and it played correctly. But I was playing it through the phone's speaker--if I'm not mistaken, the times it has acted up previously, I was on Bluetooth. Perhaps that is a contributing factor...more testing to see if it can be duplicated under those circumstances.

I won't do a factory reset for something like this. (and when I do hard resets, I always start fresh) I've already done two since last Monday when I got the phone--once as good practice after updating in place from the phone's stock Threshold build to the current Redstone 1 build, another with the hope that it would fix Live Tile B.S. (it didn't) and a fix a glitch where all the notification sounds decided to stop working (it did). Frankly, this sort of thing is getting to be (no offense) a primitive, baseball bat-type solution for problems that in my opinion really shouldn't be occurring at this stage of the W10M game. I'm on a production build of an OS that's been in a production state for nearly a year now, and under development well longer than that. The Live Tile thing, by the way, is indefensible, inexcusable, pitiful.

I guess I expended all my patience for Windows mobile devices a while back when I finally switched off Lumia 928. I loved that phone, and would still be using it were it not for app development abandonment for 8.1.

 

[daimv]

I think you should complain directly to spotify and deezer to put a bit of pressure on them to fix their apps if they are having problems, because that can't be solved by Microsoft.

 

[ChanceNC]

I think you should complain directly to spotify and deezer to put a bit of pressure on them to fix their apps if they are having problems, because that can't be solved by Microsoft.

Done, and thanks. I doubt I'll get anywhere with Spotify, given their perceived ROI on W10M users...but it's worth a shot.

 

[EspHack]

so you thought the negativity around this community was just users exaggerating? you will see half of them reporting no problems, thats how it is, if you get like 20 lumias at least one is gonna run flawlessly

 

[ChanceNC]

so you thought the negativity around this community was just users exaggerating? you will see half of them reporting no problems, thats how it is, if you get like 20 lumias at least one is gonna run flawlessly

I think it was at one point, and after my mostly positive experience with WP8 and 8.1 I wanted to believe it still was. I will try to put things in perspective and say that there are good things about W10M: the MSN News, Sports and Weather apps are excellent (effed-up Live Tiles notwithstanding), I have better-than-expected access to live sports via WatchESPN and FOX Sports Go (using a subscription to PS Vue), and other entertainment needs are met quite ably with surprisingly good UWP apps from TuneIn, CBS, iHeartRadio, Pandora and Hulu. (I wish Netflix would get on the UWP bandwagon)

Now if I can just get this on-demand music streaming business settled I'll be OK and quit whining like a baby. Ironically, in the hours since my original post, Groove has not acted up once. I'm thinking that's the one I'll stick with, since Spotify is buggy and Deezer apparently just doesn't want to do business with me.

 

[Summer_Moon]

Thanks for your reply. As if to prove me wrong, I queued up "Full Moon Fever" a little while ago and it played correctly. But I was playing it through the phone's speaker--if I'm not mistaken, the times it has acted up previously, I was on Bluetooth. Perhaps that is a contributing factor...more testing to see if it can be duplicated under those circumstances.

I won't do a factory reset for something like this. (and when I do hard resets, I always start fresh) I've already done two since last Monday when I got the phone--once as good practice after updating in place from the phone's stock Threshold build to the current Redstone 1 build, another with the hope that it would fix Live Tile B.S. (it didn't) and a fix a glitch where all the notification sounds decided to stop working (it did). Frankly, this sort of thing is getting to be (no offense) a primitive, baseball bat-type solution for problems that in my opinion really shouldn't be occurring at this stage of the W10M game. I'm on a production build of an OS that's been in a production state for nearly a year now, and under development well longer than that. The Live Tile thing, by the way, is indefensible, inexcusable, pitiful.

I guess I expended all my patience for Windows mobile devices a while back when I finally switched off Lumia 928. I loved that phone, and would still be using it were it not for app development abandonment for 8.1.

Bluetooth could be a considerable factor and I have not tried Bluetooth with Groove, which might be why I don't experience the issue. I usually either play through my speaker or headphones plugged in.

Windows 10 Mobile really is in a pretty sad state, I'll admit that. They are working through it though and it just depends on how much you're willing to put up with. I guess lucky for Microsoft I can put up with a s**t ton

 

[TheJoester09]

Thanks for your reply. As if to prove me wrong, I queued up "Full Moon Fever" a little while ago and it played correctly. But I was playing it through the phone's speaker--if I'm not mistaken, the times it has acted up previously, I was on Bluetooth. Perhaps that is a contributing factor...more testing to see if it can be duplicated under those circumstances.

I won't do a factory reset for something like this. (and when I do hard resets, I always start fresh) I've already done two since last Monday when I got the phone--once as good practice after updating in place from the phone's stock Threshold build to the current Redstone 1 build, another with the hope that it would fix Live Tile B.S. (it didn't) and a fix a glitch where all the notification sounds decided to stop working (it did). Frankly, this sort of thing is getting to be (no offense) a primitive, baseball bat-type solution for problems that in my opinion really shouldn't be occurring at this stage of the W10M game. I'm on a production build of an OS that's been in a production state for nearly a year now, and under development well longer than that. The Live Tile thing, by the way, is indefensible, inexcusable, pitiful.

I guess I expended all my patience for Windows mobile devices a while back when I finally switched off Lumia 928. I loved that phone, and would still be using it were it not for app development abandonment for 8.1.

I've had this happen to me while using Bluetooth as well. Sometimes changing audio apps will help (like starting a podcast and then going back to Groove), other times only a soft reset will help. It's definitely an annoyance, but I don't think that it's Groove's fault--I think it's a Bluetooth issue. Bluetooth has always been an issue with Windows Phone/Mobile. I don't know why they can't ever seem to get it right.

 

[Krystianpants]

so you thought the negativity around this community was just users exaggerating? you will see half of them reporting no problems, thats how it is, if you get like 20 lumias at least one is gonna run flawlessly

Also people who experience issues are louder than those that don't. If your doc gives you a prescription drug and everything works out fine you just go on with your day. You start getting side effects and issues you go online and look it up and write your experience.

There's also the fact that any single tiny thing can cause a bug on windows 10. I mean even on the Desktop I had 1 PC having a very specific annoying issue while all others didn't. This is with a clean install straight from ISO. Something with my setup created the most ridiculous issue you could think of. I just didn't get mail notifications. I didn't have settings for mail notifications in the appropriate area. And mail notifications were enabled in the app itself. Just because of something in my hardware lol. It was fixed after a long time with an update, but it shows how when you change the kernel code heavily, anything can happen.

 

[Mark F24]

Also people who experience issues are louder than those that don't. If your doc gives you a prescription drug and everything works out fine you just go on with your day. You start getting side effects and issues you go online and look it up and write your experience.

There's also the fact that any single tiny thing can cause a bug on windows 10. I mean even on the Desktop I had 1 PC having a very specific annoying issue while all others didn't. This is with a clean install straight from ISO. Something with my setup created the most ridiculous issue you could think of. I just didn't get mail notifications. I didn't have settings for mail notifications in the appropriate area. And mail notifications were enabled in the app itself. Just because of something in my hardware lol. It was fixed after a long time with an update, but it shows how when you change the kernel code heavily, anything can happen.

I sometimes wonder if it even could be related to the order in which you install and set up the phone after a reset that makes some things act odd.

 

[Kerry2112]

For those with a Google Play Music account, Cloudmuzik works very well (for me at least, on my 950XL DS), including over Bluetooth to my car system. I know the developer is working on a W10 version, but the 8.1 works fine so far for me.

 

[John D Griffith]

I use Groove with Bluetooth to a Bose speaker every day

 

[ChanceNC]

For those with a Google Play Music account, Cloudmuzik works very well (for me at least, on my 950XL DS), including over Bluetooth to my car system. I know the developer is working on a W10 version, but the 8.1 works fine so far for me.

I like Cloudmuzik and have used it off and on for years, but it's limited in that you cannot search Google's library on-demand and listen to or add music to your collection. Whatever's in your library is available, but that's it. Getting new stuff requires doing it via a device on which the Play Music app will run, or a computer's web browser. Believe me, if CM had these features, this would all be a moot point. And I blew $7 right out the window on the extremely crappy "GMusic VIP" app. It claims to offer these missing features, but it's dog slow and unreliable. The developer is good at feigning care and support by replying to every single negative review in the Store, but that's a smokescreen...it's a terrible app, and probably won't get any better or more advanced...most likely the fault of Google....but the developer is more than happy to keep extracting money from users who don't know better, myself included.

 

[ChanceNC]

I sometimes wonder if it even could be related to the order in which you install and set up the phone after a reset that makes some things act odd.

Maybe, but this is 2016, not ten years ago when conditions like you suggest could spell doom for a mobile device's stability. It should not matter on a production build. I allowed all apps to update after the last hard reset I did before seeking out and installing other stuff. I consciously followed good practices that are found in several locations on this website. Bottom line: the Anniversary Update should have made things better, more stable, less frustrating, and based on my experience with it--and the experiences of others I've read about here--it's done exactly the opposite. I could tolerate this stuff if I was on a preview build, but I'm not. Nobody here using a stock device, with stock firmware and software, and using apps in Microsoft's store, should accept blame for shoddy performance and bugs.

 

[ChanceNC]

An update on the music situation...

-Still going around with Cricket and Deezer just to get the $6/month deal to breathe. Both companies are pathetic. I expect the resolution to not be favorable.
-Uninstalled Spotify. Started throwing those idiotic "the audio cannot be started errors" again, which requires reboot to resolve. It's like using a BlackBerry again, only worse. I had a Palm Pre Plus that ran Spotify better than this device does. Seriously.
-Really enjoying Groove Music now that (for whatever reason) it's decided to behave normally. And I'm enjoying the fact that I can get music onto the phone with the ancient Windows Phone app for Mac, albeit with a slight modification I found in a how-to article on the 'net. I can't actually sync music using my iTunes library, else I'll get the dreaded Unknown Artist-Unknown Album issue...but putting music on the phone is as simple as dragging and dropping it on the phone's icon in the WP for Mac app.

Looking like it's gonna be Groove FTW...but I just need to confirm that they still offer 100GB of extra OneDrive storage for paid Groove subscriptions. Anybody know that one for sure?

 

[EspHack]

I sometimes wonder if it even could be related to the order in which you install and set up the phone after a reset that makes some things act odd.

for all we know it could be related to your IMEI ending in a odd number causing a cascade effect of buggyness, I mean, it has to be some really complicated matter otherwise how can you explain the world biggest software company struggling to fix it?