Xbox Music, your concerns and issues.

[garak0410]

I've been sticking with XBOX Music for a while now but it has become almost unusable:

• Syncing To Phone - In this day and age of "limited" data, cloud music makes little sense unless you plan on being in a lot of Wi-Fi spots. I like music on my phone. However, syncing is getting WORSE. Not only do I have to use the aging Windows Media Player to make my playlists but the latest "Desktop" Windows Phone app the other day deleted my music on my phone and even if I uncheck, sync and re-check my playlists, it will not re-sync. So, I decided to do it the hard way by downloading to my phone, adding music to NOW PLAYING and then saving the playlist. However, if I come to an album listed as "In Collection", I cannot download it to my phone. So basically, I have to go back to the PC and manually copy of music over to a folder. Oftentimes, the album Art is messed up. Yeah, there is a nifty third party app to help with the album art but we shouldn't have to do this. I want to be able to, on the fly, download an album to my phone and not have to battle with the sync issues and the "in collection" issues.
• Cloud - The music cloud is pretty much unmanageable. Granted, I've been able to create "cloud based" playlists and access them over my devices (PC, Surface, Windows Phone) and it works fairly well. However, album art and even backgrounds and artist info is very spotty when playing on the phone. Playlist creation is quite cumbersome compared to the aforementioned Windows Media Player or even Zune Player. And there is really no way to manage the cloud music. Sometimes, I'd like to play all but for example, I'd like to exclude Christmas music that is in the cloud. In addition, I have music not in the XBOX Music Store that I'd like to send to the cloud. How do I get it there? Since syncing is a joke, I need it in the cloud. No, no real way to do this.
• Playlist Limits (Cloud) - 1000 Songs. Really? 1000 Songs. OK, on the XBOX Music App, I can select multiple playlists and it will play them in Shuffle mode just fine. On the phone, I have to add each one to NOW PLAYING. On the XBOX? Nope...limited to one playlists with 1000 songs or less.

I've pretty much given up keeping some kind of order to my music anymore. Trust me, I've tried and tried over the months since XBOX Music was released but given the sync issues I had recently with the Desktop Windows Phone app, I'm done. I'll listen to my cloud playlists on the XBOX Music app but we need something like the Zune Player. It manages our music much better than the current applications. I am still hopeful for a fix but don't see one soon, even with Windows 8.1

I was never an iTunes fan but if Microsoft is going to win over iPhone fans, the music portion HAS to get fixed.

 

[CJ Thunder]

If you want to see the problems then try these links:
Master list of issues:
Master List Of Issues With XBox Music On WP8 - Microsoft Community

Master List of Issues (the return)
Disastrous Music Sync Experience - Microsoft Community

Zune Uservoice Suggestion
Continue to use Zune for media sync in WP

My WPC Thread (Xbox Music - Enough is enough)
http://forums.windowscentral.com/groove-music/217754-xbox-music-enough-enough.html

The Major Issues relate to syncing and music management

1) Duplicates - there seem to be many causes for this problem, but MS never addresses it.
2) DRM issues - WP8 regularly incorrectly tells you that you don't have the rights to play music (many times the first track of an album).
3) Metadata issues - if it doesn't recognise a track, it won't cloud sync it. You have minimal control of the metadata etc and XBM will have no problems with overwriting your music collection's metadata with its own, and introducing DRM in the process.
4) The syncing situation is totally disjointed. There is no one problem free method of managing your music (many people find the best way is with iTunes!?!?!).
5) The dedicated sync app is a total joke.
6) Managing playlists is a near impossible task.
7) No podcast support
8) The cloud sucks! There's no easy way to manage what's in your cloud music collection.
9) It's bad for pre-owned music. If you owned the music before using XBM, then if you sync from the cloud, then you can only stream it to your WP - there is no download option (this is bad for your dataplan, your battery life, for listening while travelling or if your happen to be in bad reception areas).
10) It gets easily confused with what's downloaded and what is streaming. I've seen it say that the track is downloaded, but in fact it streams it anyway!
11) Lack of wireless sync. Zune had wireless sync, which was completely seemless.

This list is by no means definitive either.

I just upgraded to W8.1 and am really playing with Music as I plan on getting the next Lumia. All this crap makes me glad I don't already have one. Especially XBM only recognizes 10 percent of my music. Around145 tracks out of 1200. It is stupid. I installed Nokia Music that got them all, Zune still got them all...WTF, otherwise I don't know about syncing, but I do miss doing that wirelessly even on Zune.

But how do I "fix" my tracks so XBM can recognize them?

 

[odoggyfresh]

they should give you an xbox music pass with your xbox live gold membership

 

[Tvan15]

Biggest complaint from me is not being able to listen to the years worth of music I downloaded with my Zune pass offline. Since it is already in my library, I can't download it to my phone. If I move it over via the sync app, when it goes to play it says I don't have the rights to it. And that is just for the albums that show up. There are a lot that I downloaded through Zune that seem to not even show up on my phone. The switching costs of having to download everything again were something that would have kept me from switching from Zune, but Xbox music isn't making it easy to stick around now. The only hope I have is that the Windows 8 app I feel has gotten much better, the phone app needs some major updates though - which hopefully are in the next update.

 

[Mystictrust]

Biggest complaint from me is not being able to listen to the years worth of music I downloaded with my Zune pass offline. Since it is already in my library, I can't download it to my phone. If I move it over via the sync app, when it goes to play it says I don't have the rights to it.

This is a big point that someone at Microsoft messed up on - who was in charge of the Xbox Music app and who did the licensing for it? When I first got my Lumia 810, I exchanged it 2 or 3 times with a period of a few weeks in-between... one phone would allow me to move my downloaded WMA files over and play them no problem, while the other wouldn't and gave me rights errors. It was completely inconsistent. I can tell you that it does in fact work... but I seems that not all devices can, like there's a bug floating around with how the Music Pass attaches to the phone or something. When I first got my phone, I did not understand all the complaining because I moved files over no problem, but after my first exchange I saw the problem.

At least we can download straight from our phone and can stream! But, I realize that won't work in every case, particularly with super large collections It's no excuse. This issue should be researched and addressed in OP's guide.