XBox Music

[Chris Sandiford]

Can anyone explain to me in simple terms how XBox Music works?

Do I need an account to play the music I own that's on my home network? I have a partially populated list of all the music I own on my phone. Why it's partial, I have no idea - it's got a few artists in every letter slot but it's only a fraction of my collection. But if I try and play any I'm told "Can't play. Sorry we are not able to play this song at the moment."

All I can play is any music physically on my phone.

If I do need an account then that's me dumping this crapplication for good. It's only got worse but to pay for stuff I own is an insult on top of a poorly performing music player.

 

[JamesPTao]

Can anyone explain to me in simple terms how XBox Music works?

Do I need an account to play the music I own that's on my home network? I have a partially populated list of all the music I own on my phone. Why it's partial, I have no idea - it's got a few artists in every letter slot but it's only a fraction of my collection. But if I try and play any I'm told "Can't play. Sorry we are not able to play this song at the moment."

All I can play is any music physically on my phone.

If I do need an account then that's me dumping this crapplication for good. It's only got worse but to pay for stuff I own is an insult on top of a poorly performing music player.

The subscription is to be able to download and stream music from Xbox. It has nothing to do with streaming music you already own. I don't know how to make the streaming work for you (sorry). I do know that OneDrive will be adding ability to hold and stream peoples music in the near future. For now though hopefully someone more tech minded on this forum can help you. Good luck.

 

[Bobvfr]

Its not an easy one to explain in simple terms because Xbox Music is a complex system, although if you take the trouble to understand it, it is a really good system.

Firstly it is a web based streaming service (Although this is stopping in the new year) it's an app on your phone, your PC's and Xbox and it is a music catalogue that you can buy from and if you have a pass, download as much music as you want.

There is one PC setting that seems to cause lots of issues and that is "Automatically match my local collection to the cloud", this setting does what it says but it matches it to the catalogue so for example if you have all eight Led Zeppelin albums you end up with just one track because Jimmy Page doesn't allow the use of the Led Zeppelin albums on services like XBM unless you buy them, but why would you buy them when you have them already.

It sounds tempting to turn this function on as in theory it syncs your music to the cloud but can have some odd consequences, I wouldn't ever turn it on.

If you take the trouble to understand XBM it is a superb system, I have a collection of 3000+ songs half local music and half collected in the last couple of months with a music pass.

I copied my local collection to each device and my music pass music sits alongside it as it auto downloads to each device.

But before I took out the pass I just used it with local music, on your PC's there is no issue of playing music across the network but I don't think the phone can do this without hitting the above mentioned setting.

I do believe there is a move to change this by the development of a OneDrive based music locker that was reported on a couple of days ago.


Bob

 

[Chris Sandiford]

Right I see. That would explain why I've only got a partial collection then.

Even if I use it on my PC and point my collection at my NAS drive, nothing changes - it still only shows a mish mash of what I own, and if for example I select Abba (I own one greatest hits album of theirs) it says there are 9 albums! I have partial albums, extra albums.. it's crazy.

It seems to be a ruination of the de facto music player by making it a streaming service. Maybe the Music Locker will fix that but for now it's not working for me.

 

[dnmartin98]

Bob,

As I understand it, matching local collection to the cloud shouldn't impact your local collection in anyway. What it is designed to do is to scan what you have on your local collection, and then make those available to you in your cloud collection, IF (and only if) they are available on Xbox Music. That way when you are out and about away from your local machine, if you are using your phone, or music.xbox.com those albums (or tracks in your LZ example) will show up in your cloud collection as available to listen to from the cloud. If you are at home with your local collection, it won't (or shouldn't) impact your local collection at all.

Having said that, I'm having issues with XBM at the moment with my collections, though this has only started recently ( I know you replied on my other post). I've been using match my local collection to the cloud for the last year or so and have had no issues till recently. It's almost as though a recent update blitzed something....

Cheers,

DavidM

 

[Bobvfr]

Since I my last message I have added the "Essential Sade" and "Best of Simon and Garfunkel" albums to my collection, another 45 songs or so, they are now downloaded to my phone, tablet, laptop, desktop and available to stream on my Xbox One, it's like being a kid in a candy shop :smile:

But I did take the time to work out how the system works before jumping in as I can see how potentially easy it is to get in a mess.

I have to say I really like how XBM works, I also got my wife a music pass for her birthday last week, I added about ten albums for her, just asked her if she has added any more and she said "I think I need another lesson" :smile:



Bob

 

[Bobvfr]

Hello David, when I set up and was ready to put the music pass on I tested that setting with a few of my artists, mainly The Beatles, Bowie, Zeppelin and Deep Purple.

I was a bit shocked at the result, ended up starting from scratch, so I would stay away from it, and now I have my full collection on, you would have to pay me plenty of pennies to turn it on again.

Having said that I suppose I could practice on my wife's set up as she doesn't have any local music as of yet, so it wouldn't take long to fix it if it screwed up, will have a go with it next weekend when I have time.


Bob