Plan to fix Xbox Music

[loofmodnar]

2. What happened to the little heart symbol for favorites? Should be like itunes so you can rate up to 5 stars.

I forgot about that. That was one of my favorite Zune functions. I used it to mark songs for my auto-complied "Best of Me" playlist and songs I either didn't like or needed to fix/redownload. I really liked the Like/Dislike/None method of rating songs. It fits pretty well with how I do things.

Sadly, I suspect without some sort of music management app for WP like Zune/iTunes, we won't be seeing that functionality come back. The ratings don't really mean anything if they're not synced back to the original file and have something with the ability to organize them.

 

[Andrea988]

I would settle for just your 1st item on the list. And I would also like to extend a welcome.

Ditto, though I have only just started using a Windows phone. My music seems to all be stored in the cloud, and won't play. I'll look into that later but I would just like to transfer my tracks from PC to Phone so I don't need to worry about having an internet connection - after all it's when I'm out and about I'm likely to be playing my music and won't always be near a Wi-Fi connection.

 

[Simon Gregory]

Ditto, though I have only just started using a Windows phone. My music seems to all be stored in the cloud, and won't play. I'll look into that later but I would just like to transfer my tracks from PC to Phone so I don't need to worry about having an internet connection - after all it's when I'm out and about I'm likely to be playing my music and won't always be near a Wi-Fi connection.

Have fun with that, see my uservoice suggestion for why:
http://xboxmusic.uservoice.com/foru...4685-fix-sync-experience-it-needs-an-overhaul

'Best' solutions now involve manual filecopy or iTunes!?! There is the WP 'sync tool', but the least said about that, the better.

 

[Pranjal Rai]

After the update, is anyone else facing the issue that, wherever you tap on any album in 'Albums' it opens up but when you switch back to previous screen, there is no album art visible. Also, another problem is that if there is a 'The' or 'A' at the beginning of an album name it is shifted at the end of the album name. And when you switch back then the name appears normally. I hate this bug.

Apart from this there are a few performance issues while loading artists, songs, etc. But apart from that, the app works perfectly fine, displaying all album art, artist images properly.

 

[Desynthesis]

After the update, is anyone else facing the issue that, wherever you tap on any album in 'Albums' it opens up but when you switch back to previous screen, there is no album art visible. Also, another problem is that if there is a 'The' or 'A' at the beginning of an album name it is shifted at the end of the album name. And when you switch back then the name appears normally. I hate this bug.

Apart from this there are a few performance issues while loading artists, songs, etc. But apart from that, the app works perfectly fine, displaying all album art, artist images properly.

On the subject of article movement--so, for example, The Beatles becomes Beatles, The, I suspect that's an (unfinished) feature intended for user preference. Before 8.1, the Music+Video app automatically sorted by the band name after the article, but didn't move the article. I prefer that (maybe I'm just used to it from the Zune), but maybe some people don't, since if you have thousands of different artists, it could be slightly faster if the 'The' was at the back?

The best solution, I guess, is to add a slider in the settings to configure that (which might cause its own problems). If not that, perhaps just default to the old format and hope everyone, or most people, prefer it that way.

 

[Pranjal Rai]

That could be an interesting theory, but I think that maybe it was just a bug.

 

[Andrea988]

Pending a decent solution from MS, can anybody suggest a decent alternative music player?

 

[Desynthesis]

To my surprise--I've heard the Xbox Music app itself is pretty close to fixing my major complaints (since it may even work with MPATool again!), and performance is somewhat better (could be improved though).

That just leaves fixing the Live Tile. My complaints about Xbox Music were very narrow though.

 

[DaveGx]

My latest problem is it will stop playing music after some time. I'll open the app, go to songs, and just hit play. It'll play a bunch of songs and then stop. I'll manually hit play again and nothing happens. I've then had to reboot my phone to start playing music again.

 

[BataBole]

I think overall the XBM app for WP has improved somewhat since the initial release with WP 8.1.

Wait what? Improved? Not for me. I don't see any changes, it still lagging, loading, resuming etc. Take a look at my video. This is my Xbox Music app running latest update. It's not any faster than it was is beginning.
Maybe you guys who use phones with 1 GB of ram can see some changes, but the majority of us using 512 MB of ram still see Sh!T.
http://youtu.be/18eBo6bZKhs

 

[Desynthesis]

Wait what? Improved? Not for me. I don't see any changes, it still lagging, loading, resuming etc. Take a look at my video. This is my Xbox Music app running latest update. It's not any faster than it was is beginning.
Maybe you guys who use phones with 1 GB of ram can see some changes, but the majority of us using 512 MB of ram still see Sh!T.

Don't conflate "not good enough" with "zero improvement". That's a false analogy.

Your list of complaints is valid, and yet, so are the following which we've now seen supported, it seems.

Improvement: GUI--closer to Music + Video. Unless you like the change to Xbox Music, this is a plus. This has been a long, gradual process, bringing back artist backgrounds, etc.
Improvement: Performance. Still needs work, but it's way faster than the beta. No ignoring that. 3 is still greater than 1, even if it is smaller than the 10 we're all hoping for.
Improvement: MPATool support. Totally undeniable, because MPATool is awesome (and coincidentally, absolutely necessary on the old Music + Video App--i.e. the good one needed it to)

You are absolutely entitled to your opinion--exactly the same amount anyone else is entitled to theirs. You're also entitled to want more (I'm still waiting for LiveTiles to be added). Furthermore, these changes aren't limited to 1 GB phones--my neighbor, with a Lumia 720, is my primary reference point (512 mb), so that may be a problem with your phone in particular.

Could it better? It certainly could. Has it improved? Yes, enormously. Don't forget, Music + Video had problems too (for example, linking to the music store database, which is easier to do with Xbox Music, for all of its problems). At least one of those has been addressed, and I'm certainly hoping more are on the table as well. In the end, Xbox Music is unfinished, and merely as good as the rather poor music players on Android and iOS--hopefully, now that Microsoft seems to be taking the problems seriously, they'll make one that's as good as Music + Video was (or close to it), while maintaining the functions that Music + Video didn't have but this one does.

 

[loofmodnar]

Wait what? Improved? Not for me. I don't see any changes, it still lagging, loading, resuming etc. Take a look at my video. This is my Xbox Music app running latest update. It's not any faster than it was is beginning.
Maybe you guys who use phones with 1 GB of ram can see some changes, but the majority of us using 512 MB of ram still see Sh!T.

I'm not sure you actually used the earlier versions. The last update was a huge improvement performance-wise for my 520.It's still not perfect but it's actually usable now as opposed to the earlier versions that took 20 seconds to load ~15 artists.

 

[JamesPTao]

Pending a decent solution from MS, can anybody suggest a decent alternative music player?

Musictastic. Simple UI and works great..

 

[JamesPTao]

Musictastic also displays album at correctly, shuffles through very large playlists, and reads mew playlists that even Xbox music doesn't recognize.

 

[Desynthesis]

I'm not sure you actually used the earlier versions. The last update was a huge improvement performance-wise for my 520.It's still not perfect but it's actually usable now as opposed to the earlier versions that took 20 seconds to load ~15 artists.

Exactly.

Incidentally, Live Tiles still aren't implemented, right? It's not just something bugged on my end.

 

[Pranjal Rai]

Hey everyone, please please please vote on my uservoice idea of getting the emerald tile option for Xbox music by clicking on the link and voting. And please share with everyone. http://forums.windowscentral.com/showthread/302880.htm

 

[loofmodnar]

Exactly.

Incidentally, Live Tiles still aren't implemented, right? It's not just something bugged on my end.

I'm pretty sure that's supposed to be in the next update. The schedule is kind of wonky since they missed one week and then apparently rolled kid's corner & whatever into the last update.

 

[Desynthesis]

I'm pretty sure that's supposed to be in the next update. The schedule is kind of wonky since they missed one week and then apparently rolled kid's corner & whatever into the last update.

I see. That will probably be the kick-off for me updating back to 8.1 then--if MPATool is already working (if someone could try it out, I'd be very grateful ) and I miss things like the new information hub. I will miss the dropping of FB messages from chat, but I guess that was inevitable (the same thing happened on PC).

 

[Andrea988]

Musictastic also displays album at correctly, shuffles through very large playlists, and reads mew playlists that even Xbox music doesn't recognize.

That will do nicely for me, thank you.

 

[jomarr]

To get even close to the WP7 experience they'd need to:
- Reinstate recently played screen.
- Reinstate the live tile
- Correctly adhere to multidisc order.
- Stop the app trying to connect through the internet all the time, if I'm playing local music, I shouldn't need to 'log in'.
- Fix app from streaming songs even when they are local
- Fix app from occasionally refusing to play songs with DRM related error messages
- Fix app to correctly read metadata and images
- Fix the noise between tracks
- provide a decent companion app to allow you to organise your collection properly and controls to seemlessly edit metadata
- add decent syncing experience
- add wireless sync and or add a music locker to allow you to sync (not just stream) own music collection through the cloud
- vastly improve the performance
- bring back music ratings and reinstate it as a syncing filter
- stop cloud matching overwriting metadata of your own collection
- stop cloud syncing creating duplicate tracks
- properly reinstate recommended music suggestions

Oh, and seeing as its the #1 suggestion on the uservoice page they might want to look at providing gapless playback too!

You hit the nail on the head sir.

Also, the library does not update right away... We also need settings on our music player.