Will The Original Xbox Music App Please Stand up?

[wetworker]

After Searching for an alternative to the the Xbox Music App I found this app. It's called Music+
The Xbox Music app Now playing screen is a direct rip.

I don't know it we have the same developers and designers working on the phone UI but some of the things being taken out is just killing the experience of WP.
Picture Hub gone. Contact hub gone, Music + Video gone. Even the store looks boring now.

Music+
Music+ | Windows Phone Apps+Games Store (Ireland)

 

[von929Shavone]

Thanks for the tip. I've been trying to find and alternative to the Xbox Music app also. I have about 5000 songs on my 1520 and Nokia Mix Radio won't even load my SD card. The new Xbox Music app sucks ***! I want the old player back with the artist backgrounds..... On a side note the Photo Hub is ultra whack now, too. I have to click my Facebook folder, just to get to all my photo albums. this is really inconvenient. The main reason I preferred WP over IPhone was the keyboard, music app and the photo hub. It's seems like all the features that made WP unique are being stripped away.

 

[Harjit Minhas]

Remember it is first build so give it time ND since we have 'developer' preview of 8.1 if we express concern to Microsoft, who knows maybe they will listen to the masses. Start the petition and gain signatures

 

[xandros9]

I just miss my swipe to skip..

 

[eruptflail]

I'm confused about the difference between the two apps. They have the same functionality. Also, I'm glad they fixed the picture hub. It was misleading because you couldn't use any of the OneDrive or Facebook photos for anything anyway. It's best just to let them stay within their native app.

 

[pmich]

I cannot believe how backwards Microsoft went with this app. Not only do we lose artist backgrounds but the app itself is a laggy nightmare. It takes a lot longer to load and seems to flash/blink a few times during use. I've lost the bios for all my artists. I don't normally keep a SIM card in my phone, (i carry two phones) so now it'll only show bios when i'm in a wifi zone. Further to all that, a lot my music now asks to me re-download it. As much as the new features (notification centre and cortana) are awesome, the feature i use everyday is the music app and unfortunately they took many steps back with 8.1. Hopefully when it goes official in a few months, they'll work out the bugs.

 

[Nakazul]

The Xbox Music app doesn't show my purchased music. Where have it gone?

 

[von929Shavone]

I miss swipe to skip, the controls being on top instead of the bottom, the artist backgrounds look terrible compared to the old version, the layout seems weird and the artist are not even showing up on the lock screen when the music is playing. I guess I've lost my bragging rights on why WP is better when I post screenshots of what currently listening to, when I post to instagram, LOL... Hopefully this mess will get sorted out soon. My music is the heart of my phone and I'm not happy!

 

[Dk92]

I miss swipe to skip, the controls being on top instead of the bottom, the artist backgrounds look terrible compared to the old version, the layout seems weird and the artist are not even showing up on the lock screen when the music is playing. I guess I've lost my bragging rights on why WP is better when I post screenshots of what currently listening to, when I post to instagram, LOL... Hopefully this mess will get sorted out soon. My music is the heart of my phone and I'm not happy!

I agree with everything except the music controls being on the top. That was extremely annoying. I'm glad they switched that.

 

[TonyDedrick]

This music player has always been amateurish, IMO. At the very least, we can easily make playlist on the fly and actually add and remove songs. I've gotten used to the lack of artist pictures since WP8 and I can deal with the lag.

 

[Ryan Horn]

Has anyone figured out how to see a list of recent and/or newly downloaded music? I'd say that's my number one gripe with the Xbox Music app, I don't want to hunt around or be forced to create a playlist just to be able to easily access the newest music I've downloaded/listened to...

 

[wetworker]

We might have to start a kick starter program and get Rudy Huyn to develop a proper Media player . It's starting to looks like they have totally forgotten why us first adopters loved the concept of hubs and WP.

 

[wetworker]

This music player has always been amateurish, IMO. At the very least, we can easily make playlist on the fly and actually add and remove songs. I've gotten used to the lack of artist pictures since WP8 and I can deal with the lag.

Sure some of the features on the original app was lacking but the usibility was top notch. All they had to do was implement all those missing features and it woould have been ok with the majority of use who don't like this vsrsion.

As for the artist images, That was part of the entire experience of that app. It was so important that someone actually created an app called MPATool. It did what Microsoft could not do. It gave you the freedom to do in app search for any artist with Google and a couple other search engines. It also gave you the ability to create A Skydrive / Onedrive folder and load any photos into the app. I never relied on the images from MS in two years. The majority of the time composition was off, blurry images, wrong image or because they are independent they never heard of these artist.

MPAtool | Windows Phone Apps+Games Store (United States)

 

[wetworker]

I miss swipe to skip, the controls being on top instead of the bottom, the artist backgrounds look terrible compared to the old version, the layout seems weird and the artist are not even showing up on the lock screen when the music is playing. I guess I've lost my bragging rights on why WP is better when I post screenshots of what currently listening to, when I post to instagram, LOL... Hopefully this mess will get sorted out soon. My music is the heart of my phone and I'm not happy!

I don't think they realize how important some of these minor things are when it comes to visuals. Opening the music hub was an experience when you added a new artist. Especially when you added your own background with MPATools app.

Check my instagram feed. not one of those post of what I was listening to background images came from MS services. All my images were cropped to perfectly to look great.
Instagram

 

[von929Shavone]

I feel like Windows Phone is losing the luster that made it stand out against the other OS... Yes, there is a major app difference compared to android and ios, but the special features that made the whole experience different and worthwhile are being washed away slowly. I don't really give two damns about Cortana! And I had no beef with the Photo Hub. They have jacked up my music experience and now I can't figure out how to upload photos to Onedrive, WTF? Yea, I know I could have it set to auto-upload, but I want to save what I wanna, not every pic I flick. I select the picture I wanna upload and hit share and I see every option except Onedrive. Am I doing something wrong? I really need help.

 

[F3rzz]

I just miss my swipe to skip..

me too. THE FEELSSS it was prolly my most used feature of the whole OS.

 

[wetworker]

I feel like Windows Phone is losing the luster that made it stand out against the other OS... Yes, there is a major app difference compared to android and ios, but the special features that made the whole experience different and worthwhile are being washed away slowly. I don't really give two damns about Cortana! And I had no beef with the Photo Hub. They have jacked up my music experience and now I can't figure out how to upload photos to Onedrive, WTF? Yea, I know I could have it set to auto-upload, but I want to save what I wanna, not every pic I flick. I select the picture I wanna upload and hit share and I see every option except Onedrive. Am I doing something wrong? I really need help.

Yes they did a number on all these things that made it different. Btw I can't log into OneDrive,I can't even uninstall it.

 

[Samm Neiland]

me too. THE FEELSSS it was prolly my most used feature of the whole OS.

Thirded. Quite possibly the most useful feature too given it made navigating through playlists and shuffle play a total breeze.

 

[Zacharyw70]

The Xbox Music App isn't updated to Windows Phone 8.1 these issues are because the developer preview using the terrible older app, and now it's even more unoptimized since it isn't updated to 8.1 Belifore already stated the WP8.1 app is on the way on Twitter.

 

[F3rzz]

i read that earlier tooo and YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASSS i hope it comes sooon


BTW i think the XBox Games appdate fixed the "updatingness" of it. It still does it, but way faster. Thank God. it used to be ready to select a game in 8