Xbox Music / Windows Phone 8 syncing is the bane of my existence

[red grenadine]

It is unfathomable to me how a software company as large and renowned as Microsoft could ship such a awful piece of software.

It really blows my mind.

Windows 8:
- I have hundreds of artists in my music. The default sorting order is A-Z. However, I can't simply press a letter (say, "S") to move down to artists starting with S. I have to scroll for MINUTES
- Spend a while digging around, exploring, and looking through music and artists, etc. Have fun trying to get back to the main menu or your music. You'll have to hit the back button 50 times to get back to where you were. No easy way to get back to the main menu short of closing the app and re-opening.
- Why is all of Eminem oeuvre always shown in Top Music? I understand he's popular but seriously now
- The most unintuitive user interface created
- Awful metadata management, often rewriting stuff incorrectly
- MUCH MUCH MORE

Windows Phone 8:
- Numerous media rights errors necessitating a power cycle of the phone
- Numerous freezes and slowdowns. Often get kicked out of the app to the home screen
- No wireless syncing; Cloud collection is a half-baked effort that requires manual downloading of each song on the phone
- Actual syncing is a nightmare with 2 separate apps, neither of which are even close to serviceable
- MUCH MUCH MORE

Sorry if this is duplicative. I just really needed to vent. I can't believe this is what they reward loyal enthusiasts of Zune/WP7 with. And what boggles my mind is they haven't bothered to make the situation any better since release in October.

I just downloaded both the Spotify and iTunes desktop apps, and both are simply light-years beyond where the Xbox music app is. I've been a Microsoft fan for years, but honestly if this music experience doesn't get fixed, and quickly, I'm going to have to bite the bullet and buy an iPhone and return to the world of iTunes.

This is what it has come to. iTunes is a better piece of software than Microsoft's offering. The world has turned upside down.

 

[dawindbag]

Absolutely agree on all points. I am so angry over this situation. You didn't even mention what a useless mess the Podcast situation is either.

Making matters worse is that it seems like MS has no interest in improving the music app for people who aren't interested in a Xbox Music Pass. I have 10k songs that have taken me over a decade to accumulate and organize and now Windows 8 makes it impossible for me to enjoy them.

I suppose someday cloud syncing, playlist support, metadata management will work but it seems like you'll need a music pass and a huge of data plan to leverage any of that functionality on a phone.

I'm looking at my 3 WPs and 3 Zunes and regretting my choices more every day.

 

[red grenadine]

Absolutely agree on all points. I am so angry over this situation. You didn't even mention what a useless mess the Podcast situation is either.

Making matters worse is that it seems like MS has no interest in improving the music app for people who aren't interested in a Xbox Music Pass. I have 10k songs that have taken me over a decade to accumulate and organize and now Windows 8 makes it impossible for me to enjoy them.

I suppose someday cloud syncing, playlist support, metadata management will work but it seems like you'll need a music pass and a huge of data plan to leverage any of that functionality on a phone.

I'm looking at my 3 WPs and 3 Zunes and regretting my choices more every day.

I ponied up for a full year music pass don't worry, it's still an awful, awful, awful, awful piece of software that sucks.

Oh, and have fun trying to play your music pass songs with any other player, including Windows Media Player. Media Rights Errors galore!

 

[red grenadine]

Oh I almost forgot. NO GAPLESS PLAYBACK for either the Windows 8 app or the phone app.

Unreal. Just F-in unreal. Amateurish really.

 

[dawindbag]

The most ironic thing about the Xbox Music App on Win8 is that it manages to highlight all the flaws in the Metro design language. I like Metro, and usually it's great, but Xbox Music is just not compatible with it and it's implemented terribly.

I'm a little stumped that every single thread in this forum isn't about the terrible music experience. I'm guessing the majority either don't listen to music on their WP8s, rely almost exclusively on Music Pass or Last.fm or use strictly old school drag and drop. No way anyone could be satisfied with the Xbox Music experience.

 

[lipper2000]

The most ironic thing about the Xbox Music App on Win8 is that it manages to highlight all the flaws in the Metro design language. I like Metro, and usually it's great, but Xbox Music is just not compatible with it and it's implemented terribly.

I'm a little stumped that every single thread in this forum isn't about the terrible music experience. I'm guessing the majority either don't listen to music on their WP8s, rely almost exclusively on Music Pass or Last.fm or use strictly old school drag and drop. No way anyone could be satisfied with the Xbox Music experience.

I think the xbox music app on win8 is getting better...it was almost unusable at the beginning but it's now at a point that it works fine for me...I've got a music pass...when I'm working I just hit up smartdj and away it goes...pretty flawless...the artist information and all the albums come up...not sure what is wrong with the current functionality...
HOWEVER, there are a ton of features from the zune software missing...I'd like to be able to rate the songs (and play songs based on rating, etc...)...playlist's could be better done...I'm sure they will add more in time...it's definitely been rushed. I read that MS France did the Xbox music app and started from scratch whereas the zune music software was developed over quite a few years

Xbox music on WP8 is fine...don't have any issues with it at all...starts playing my zune pass songs over both wifi and 4G much faster than it did with WP7...I think the DRM part works better now than in the past...

The lack of a good WP8 app for just handling the phone itself with win8 or win7 is pretty pathetic, I'll give you that...the win8 app is beyond a joke

 

[dawindbag]

I think the xbox music app on win8 is getting better...it was almost unusable at the beginning but it's now at a point that it works fine for me...I've got a music pass...when I'm working I just hit up smartdj and away it goes...pretty flawless...the artist information and all the albums come up...not sure what is wrong with the current functionality...
HOWEVER, there are a ton of features from the zune software missing...I'd like to be able to rate the songs (and play songs based on rating, etc...)...playlist's could be better done...I'm sure they will add more in time...it's definitely been rushed. I read that MS France did the Xbox music app and started from scratch whereas the zune music software was developed over quite a few years

Xbox music on WP8 is fine...don't have any issues with it at all...starts playing my zune pass songs over both wifi and 4G much faster than it did with WP7...I think the DRM part works better now than in the past...

The lack of a good WP8 app for just handling the phone itself with win8 or win7 is pretty pathetic, I'll give you that...the win8 app is beyond a joke

You use Music Pass, all your songs and SmartDJs playlists come directly from MS's cloud. That's the one limited use case that MS apparently accounted for. The second you introduce songs ripped from CDs, custom or dynamic playlists or need to actually sync content between devices you'll see how utterly broken this app is.

 

[conanheath]

Xbox music is just another rushed to market half ass attempt from MS. Its a growing line of services they offer that seems like they worked on the high points and brushed thru or forgot about the details. They will get it fixed sooner or later but we may be seeing Win9 and WP9 before anything 8 is fixed.

 

[wpn00b]

You sir, are angry. And I agree wholeheartedly. I went to Windows Phone for the music experience that is Zune and Windows Phone. I love the platform. They need to fix this.

 

[dudedud]

I think the music player is OKAY. But syncing my Zune/Xbox Music pass music is a nightmare. I can sync my own music just fine (which btw i don't have much of anymore because for some reason xbox music started to re download the music i already owned with DRM and managed to delete my old music (or i'm just too dumb to find the original files).
Any ways, I use WMP to sync the music I can but I had the connector applications. I just download the songs that are music pass songs right on my phone so i dont have to deal with the god awful apps.

Oh and half my Zune music pass music doesn't even work, so if i want to listen to it on my computer i have to download it through the Music app which takes about 10 munites for each song because i have to delete the song with broken usage rights and then search for it, then go through the horrible interface to find the ******** song! (I'm getting angry just typing this **** out!)

 

[dgr_874]

Ya, same here. I tried and tried to make it work to no avail. It's just poorly done and noting can be done to polish it up. I putting my lumia 920 into my desk drawer and going back to my iPhone. Hopefully I can pull it back out when Microsoft fixes this mess.

 

[Trainwreck_0532]

Ya, same here. I tried and tried to make it work to no avail. It's just poorly done and noting can be done to polish it up. I putting my lumia 920 into my desk drawer and going back to my iPhone. Hopefully I can pull it back out when Microsoft fixes this mess.

unfortunately I think this is all we can do for now until its fixed. The update should be here soon though, so keep checking.

 

[dgr_874]

unfortunately I think this is all we can do for now until its fixed. The update should be here soon though, so keep checking.

Will do! I certainly think that Microsoft is on the right track and the potential for something awesome is there. I'm not giving up just yet.

 

[Simon Gregory]

The craziness of this is that we shouldn't even need to be thinking about the potential of this app. They already had it in spades with Zune. Why on earth kill off something like that and replace it with something that is inferior in every single way. Zune was where the metro UI started, so this should have been the easiest thing to do. I'm just so angry and disappointed at this completely brainless decision, which seems to be backed up by even more brainless decisions to persevere with the app.
To me, this is equivalent to discontinuing Word out of the blue and forcing users to write documents in Notepad instead. Simply because the branding for Word wasn't thought out very well or given proper support. Then adding back each feature in update cycles of (at least) 6 months.

 

[Simon Gregory]

In fact, here's another analogy. X car maker brings out their latest model car, which has the potential to be better than every other car make out there. This company also happens to make tyres, but that part of the company doesn't really get much of the company's budget, so it's not a household name. Company then decides to shut down that arm of the business, and give the whole tyre and wheel making job to the part of the company that makes the headlamps. This department has no experience with tyres or wheels, so they start inventing from scratch. Unfortunately, the car needs to be released, so they have to bung something on. They decide to use square wheels, to see how that goes. Car then goes on the market, but unfortunately, the ride is awful. Company then addresses this problem, not by putting their original circular wheels on, oh no, instead they update the wheels every 6-12 months, by adding a new side to it each time (i.e. a pentagon, then a hexagon etc.) until eventually they get back to something which is very similar to the circular wheels they originally had. However, in that time, everybody has now either sold their cars, or are extremely fed up and angry about their incredibly sore backs. This may sound silly, but I don't think it's a million miles away from this whole stupid Zune/XBM situation.

 

[Simon Gregory]

Looks like we just got our 'pentagon shaped' wheels. There's a new update for Xbox music on W8 today, anybody else get it?
Most obvious change upon install are the new tooltips explaining how music matching and the cloud works. As if explaining what these things are makes any difference to their implementation. Will have a hunt around the app for signs of any improvements...

 

[Trainwreck_0532]

In artist view, when you open an artist with multiple albums, it used to just open all songs alphabetically, now it actually separates by album. Makes it a little easier, still sucks for syncing to my phone though, all the same errors. C'mon hexagonal wheels!

 

[Simon Gregory]

What's with this annoying modal popup when you click on anything, that's not changed, it's always felt so out of place.
Didn't there used to be a select all tracks option somewhere when you have an album selected? Also, if you select more than one song that's stored locally, then the download option is shown, even though its already there. It could be to redownload the tracks if you want to I suppose, but why is it missing when only one track is selected? The 'music matching' has still messed up my albums, and I really miss wireless sync.
The 'hexagon update' will be another long wait I'm afraid! Just put the round wheels back on MS, and save us all this agro!

 

[Malcolm Clement]

And on top of it all, EVERY SINGLE SONG I download with my Xbox Music Pass (I'm a sucker) has some sort of break or skip in it. No other streaming service or song I download through other means does this. This issue is ONLY on Xbox Music and is very annoying. Seriously, who are the amateurs that are running this department? Do they ever listen to music or do they carry around an Android phone or iPhone/iPod to listen to music?

Very poorly executed on EVERY level.

And WHY does the live tile have to be a big green square when you're not actively listening to music? WP7 was much better as it left the last played artist on the live tile.

Don't even get me started on making playlists on the go or even syncing playlists or anything like that. Horrid experience.

 

[red grenadine]

still can't hit a button (say "P") on my keyboard and have the screen scroll down to artists starting with "P"

I'm sure the semantic zoom thing is great on a touchscreen, but I"m not using a touchscreen.

I'm not going to raise my blood pressure by trying to dig any further tonight