Terribly missing the old "now playing" screen for Xbox Music.

[Samm Neiland]

I'd already seen a few posts of people lamenting some of the issues with the new Xbox Music app. The live tile being gone, general sluggishness, weird album art stuff.

But I'm honestly missing the old "now playing" screen. I really liked that it showed me what song was playing next especially when I'd shuffle my songs, and I ESPECIALLY miss the ability to skip to the previous and next song by swiping left or right respectively on the screen. Like it was a little thing, but just REALLY nice, especially since it made it much easier to skip a song while I was listening to my music in the car.

Also, before when you'd press and hold a song, you could "add song to now playing" and it would not only add the song to the current playlist, but it would make it so it was the next song to be played. I was actually quite fond of this as well since sometimes I just got in the mood to listen to one song in particular before going back to whatever was going on with my shuffle.

I dunno, maybe I'm just holding on to features that didn't really matter, but I feel like the app as a whole has suffered a major downgrade. Like before the Music App felt wonderfully tightly integrated into the whole phone OS, and now it just feels like a floaty afterthought of an application.

 

[phonohead]

What actually amazed me the most is the absence of the live tile. We can only hope that an update/fix is pending.

 

[Cryio]

It seriously disappointed me how they massacred the Music app. I sure hope it's just a bug.

 

[herbertsnow]

It's a beta, not a finished product. You're all beta testers now. HAHAHA

 

[Anders Homann]

The new music app is really painfully slow, unfortunately....
Other than that I'm also having a lot of problems syncing songs that aren't in their catalog.

 

[KHROMAsynthetik]

This is my major complaint about 8.1 - music probably makes up about 50% of my usage on my phone all by itself and I also loved all the little touches you've mentioned. They've completely ruined Xbox Music for me.

 

[Samm Neiland]

Alright so I did a little searching through the Windows Phone store and found something that more or less helps replace a lot of the stuff I've been missing for music player, though I still hope Microsoft (or a 3rd party for that matter) fixes before the final release of 8.1

Anyway, its an app called In Reach (In Reach | Windows Phone Apps+Games Store (United States))

Its pretty dead simple, but more or less gives you the easy swipe left and right controls, shows you the next upcoming songs playing, and something else handy, allows you to pause the song by tapping the screen. VERY handy controls for driving and what not. It also has a quick shuffle button which is a nice touch.

That said, I really do hope Microsoft actually pays attention to the complaints arising in relation to Xbox Music. The App's Store page has been flooded with some pretty negative reviews thus far (I may have even added my own) so HOPEFULLY that'll give them the nod to maybe address the issues being brought up, especially before 8.1 actually goes live. Which by all means, feel free to leave a negative review if you haven't already

 

[vlad0]

Here





Lots of questions about apps.. Many 8.1 updates coming (eg Facebook, Skype, Twitter). I don't know dates, sorry. Also, Music app too.


http://twitter.com/joebelfiore/statuses/455869163215802368

 

[sakendrick]

Not being able to add a song to play next in the current playing now is killing me. I used that feature all the time

 

[JJohnson1701]

The screwed-up music app is one of the major reasons I upgraded to 8.0 from 8.1. And yes, I mean every word of that. Windows Phone 8.0 is an upgrade from 8.1. Hubs, social integration, integrated music+videos hub, working photo hub, Bing vision, Local Scout, and more.

The separate Now Playing screen was a major feature - swipe left/right to change tracks, tap the text underneath to access playlist, etc. Beautiful design. Now, you can swipe up/down, but that's not intuitive. Having Now Playing as a pivot is counter-intuitive. Just put it back the way you had it!

 

[Trevor Wolfe]

I like it the way it is now.

 

[loofmodnar]

I think the current now playing could use a little tweaking but overall it's pretty good. Swipe up/down makes a slightly less sense than left/right but works fine. I'd like to see larger buttons, easier to see shuffle/repeat icons, make the currently playing song text bigger, etc

I still miss the ZuneHD's overlay of Play/Pause, next, previous, and volume. That was the best.