Why does XBOX Music suck so hard?

[Yazen]

I used to own a Zune 120 and a Zune HD 32. Even though syncing/library updating was not perfect, I really liked the player. However, I never really bought into their subscription service. I always wondered why Zune failed as a music platform, everything seemed great.

Buying into the Xbox Music "Pi Day" sale was a huge mistake!

In general:
1 - Mediocre quality music pass streaming (192 Kb/s WMA)
2 - Low quality purchased music (256-320 Kb/s MP3)
3 - No playlist exporting

Xbox Music W8.1:

1. No obvious way to manage downloading other than closing the app.
2. Unintuitive
3. Backwards in terms of usability. WMP and Zune are so much better, and they needed some overhauling!
4. Ugly as sin

Xbox Music WP8.1:

1. Always defaults to personal collection when searching. Why not combine store and collection? I have no music on my device, so I am always stuck tapping the darn store text element every time I want to search for a song.
2. Relatively slow to start a stream.
3. Usability is somewhat hampered by minor hiccups, but nowhere near as bad as W8.1 version.
4. Behaves similar to the Zune HD, which imo is a plus.
5. If they can squash the bugs and fix the inconveniences I can see myself using the app more.

Xbox Music iOS (iPhone 6)

1. Garbage interface. Eye sore to look at, convoluted menus.. My baby brother was very excited to try out the app on his iPhone as he is an avid Xbox user. He tried to like the app, but he is now using the free iTunes radio :S
2. Quite stable

Xbox Music (Web)

1. Interface is reminiscent of W8.1
2. Not any better

Hope they can improve the music quality. Been trying to get into paid subscription models, and MixRadio has been pretty good. Not sure how they are compressing their music, so far MixRadio uses less data and sounds better!

I feel like a damn fool :unhappysweat:

EDIT: Suggestions so far:

• Have Store+Collection toggle in WP8.1
• Use a different codec, and or increase the bitrates Opus? iTunes has lossless and AAC, far superior lol
• Rebrand WMP to Xbox Music, seriously.

 

[HeyCori]

The Xbox Music app is getting replaced in Windows 10 so I guess we'll see then what happens.