Okay, need a straight answer on XBOX Music problems....

[Keith Wallace]

Not a problem, and feel free to message me if you have any other questions.

 

[Josh Harman]

Sorry to inform you, but playlists for your collection won't sync to your WP8.
Unless you use a x86 Windows 8 computer/tablet... and that's only in theory, my Windows 8 PC is x64 so I can't confirm that.
It's a problem that MS is "working on". I've tried for months - every way you could think of to make it work, but nothing does.
You can make playlist manually on your phone and manually through file explorer when plugged into a PC but that's about it.

Just to clarify, you can sync the content of your playlists to WP8 but the playlist itself will not show up under 'playlists' in the Xbox Music app... and if it does happen to show up under 'playlists' it will be empty.

 

[Gungzwei]

If you only have one music device (i.e. just your phone and not phone + Zune HD) I'd recommend moving to WP8. Better hardware. Better games. Xbox music is fine in this situation and the GDR2 update did make some performance improvements on the phone.

Where Xbox music fails, hard, is there isn't a content management tool. I made the switch to the Lumia 928 and I love it over my Tropy. It's just annoying that I don't get the playlists, channels and music picks that made Zune superior to anything out there. It even acknowledged that a podcast had been played on my Zune HD and would remove it from my Trophy. All automagically. Without any wires.

I'm sure the fact that the Zune team moved into the much larger Xbox/Entertainment team had everything to do with who won the urinating contest that decided whose music app lived and whose died. Stupid corporate politics.

 

[snowmutt]

If you only have one music device (i.e. just your phone and not phone + Zune HD) I'd recommend moving to WP8. Better hardware. Better games. Xbox music is fine in this situation and the GDR2 update did make some performance improvements on the phone.

Where Xbox music fails, hard, is there isn't a content management tool. I made the switch to the Lumia 928 and I love it over my Tropy. It's just annoying that I don't get the playlists, channels and music picks that made Zune superior to anything out there. It even acknowledged that a podcast had been played on my Zune HD and would remove it from my Trophy. All automagically. Without any wires.

I'm sure the fact that the Zune team moved into the much larger Xbox/Entertainment team had everything to do with who won the urinating contest that decided whose music app lived and whose died. Stupid corporate politics.

Just curious- how did GDR2 improve it? Again, I will be synching it and yes, I will only use my phone.

 

[Piratelooksat40]

Here is my suggestion. DO NOT MOVE! It is not worth it until you have heard all the problems are fixed with XBOX music. I am a huge user of ZUNE. I have a home server with over 17,000 songs, we use a Win7 machine to manage and listen to the library. When I had a Windows Phone 7 it worked perfectly. When I went to Windows phone 8 I had NOTHING but problems. I purchased a Nokia 820 because it has an SD card just so I could put music on it. The first card I bought was a class 10 card and I could never get anything on it. Everyone said the card was to fast. I bought a class 4 card and then the songs constantly paused while I played them, I was told that was because the card was to slow. I called Nokia, they sent me a class 6 card, and it still skips, but only if I play it over Bluetooth.

Getting the songs on the device is a huge pain. Remember how nice it was with Zune, if you modify a playlist it would just add the new songs. You can forget that. I first started using Windows Media player, and sometimes playlists would come over and sometimes you would get a playlist with one song in it. When that happens you have to do a hard reset on your phone and start completely over with everything. I am fortunate to have some contacts at Microsoft(I worked there for 17 years) and I finally got so pissed I got a hold of the General Manager of Xbox Music and got 5 people on the phone to tell me what to do. They all said the same thing, that the best way to sync was to use the Windows8 sync tool. They were very apologetic about the problems and said lots of changes are coming in 8.1 that should fix all of these issues. I told them, they really need to be able to sync to the phone straight from the Xbox music app, I am not sure if they are going to do that or not.

The bottom line for me:
* If I play music over any Bluetooth device I get random 1 second pauses in songs
* If I add 1 new song to a playlist I have to add the whole playlist to the device again, it has no concept of syncing
* I edit playlists through Media player, because Xbox Music interface sucks.
* My album art on my phone is wrong 60% of the time.

I would just wait until you hear this is straight. I am extremely sorry that I ever upgraded. There is NOTHING on Windows Phone 8 that I think I could live without. But I sure miss my Zune.

 

[spyderzWPC]

I will say I honestly hated xbox music when it first came out it was missing so much that zune had.
I am a W8 and WP8 user.
They work well together, now. There were a lot of growing pains originally. I do not use playlists so I am useless in commenting on that aspect, I do know the updated WP* appp for file transfers includes a playlist button so maybe someone can highlight upon the details that I am not aware of. My music is not pop (mainly metal) so not always well known artists and titles. I only have a couple that aren't great with the meta data on the phone. As previous posts have stated MPAtool is great fixes all the art issues.
on a W8 device I had a ton of trouble with music but it was due to using multiple hard drives and some permission issues. If you are on a single hard drive the music works perfect out the box, if not, I had to fix some indexing settings in the control panel which solved a lot of my issues. I really got away from HTC devices after having an HTC trophy I found the hard ware to be extremely lack luster. After switching to a nokia device I have found the OS to be much more reliable. A big thing I did love was not having to rely on zune to transfer my music so once you do the full switch over I really think you will like it better.

were there growing pains, yes there were. Looking at the gdr3 I am happy to say it looks like most of my issues will finally be resolved. Once you get a nokia you will see how much effort that nokia is putting into their devices that the other manufacturers aren't.

 

[mihnat]

Just to clarify, you can sync the content of your playlists to WP8 but the playlist itself will not show up under 'playlists' in the Xbox Music app... and if it does happen to show up under 'playlists' it will be empty.

Thanks so much, I thought I was going crazy with this quirk. Even quirkier on my "Music+Video" app a'la GDR2, I can see songs put into a playlist on the web only under the "artist" header but not under the "songs" (or as you said, "playlists") headers and thus cant download any of the songs added via the web. Very strange and equally irritating!! I think it?s the ghost of Steve Jobs having a little fun....

 

[snowmutt]

I m thinking the Nokia 900 will be my choice. I really, really, REALLY want the advantages of WP8, but that is just because I like new stuff. Overall, the main reasons I use my device (call quality, Office mobile, texting, web browsing) are great on the 900 and the music player is just too darn important. I will upgrade after 8.1 comes out (next Jan/Feb), so it is not like I have a year and a half to wait.

Just kills me. MS was bound to have problems. I understand why they made the move they did. This interface is the way things will be done. But, so painful.....

 

[Gungzwei]

Just curious- how did GDR2 improve it? Again, I will be synching it and yes, I will only use my phone.

Only minor improvements. And I'm only talking about XBM on the phone.
-It moves betweens songs smoother.
-Finds my Zune playlists on the cloud.
-A little better about not creating duplicate tracks when allowing cloud music.

 

[Gungzwei]

The thing that irks me the most right now is that MS seemed to be spending a LOT of resources making XBM work for iPhone and Droid instead of fixing the HUGE list of issues on WP8.

Just stupid.

 

[six6xis]

Sadly i import music into ITunes first and then move it over to Xbox Music so that the metadata doesnt get borked.

 

[snowmutt]

What is moronic and stupid of me is I just CAN'T pull the trigger on this silly decision. I have about 6-8 months, then I will be on a new device anyways. But here I am, about to grab a 900... nope. Really, really want WP8. Gonna pull the trigger on the 820... nah. Love the Zune too much, and the 820 is not the most loved of the Nokia's out there even though it is the price range I am allowing myself.

Meanwhile, I am dealing with a Titan 2 which is driving me batty with it's quirks and shortcomings.

I need an intervention.

 

[Piratelooksat40]

What is moronic and stupid of me is I just CAN'T pull the trigger on this silly decision. I have about 6-8 months, then I will be on a new device anyways. But here I am, about to grab a 900... nope. Really, really want WP8. Gonna pull the trigger on the 820... nah. Love the Zune too much, and the 820 is not the most loved of the Nokia's out there even though it is the price range I am allowing myself.

Meanwhile, I am dealing with a Titan 2 which is driving me batty with it's quirks and shortcomings.

I need an intervention.

DO NOT BUY THE 820 if you like music. I am telling you right now the whole SD card is a disaster. I am on the phone with Nokia 2 times a week, and they can't fix it. I have had my 820 for almost a year. It took me 6 months to finally get playlists to work, but now the songs have a random 1 second pause when playing over Bluetooth. It works fine with Pandora, it works fine if it is connected through and aux cable, but if the song is on the SD card you get random pauses. I have even written Elop and got a note back from him and got a call from what they are saying is their top tier support, and they still have no solution.

IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR A PHONE FOR MUSIC, DO NOT BUY A NOKIA 820, until they fix the Bluetooth problem.

 

[snowmutt]

Pirate, I am so, so sorry about all that crap you are having to go through. It is ridiculous. All I hear is 8.1 is going to be so much better for the music interface. But meanwhile, WP8 users are stuck with this mess. Throw in that an 8.1 update to existing devices will bring other problems with it even as it fixes the initial problems, and this is just a mess that never should have happened.

Thanks to you and everyone else who posts and shares, I purchased a Lumia 900, and will use it until 8.1 devices come out. And if MS wants to keep me, then XBOX Music needs to be fixed. It really isn't much to ask.

Good luck, buddy. Prayer is available if needed......

 

[azcruz]

I do management of my music using Windows Media Player, I use it to sync songs into my HTC 8S. So if you're running Windows 8/8.1 I suggest you give it a try.




Sent from my Lumia 610 using Tapatalk

 

[Hoku001]

If you have a personal collection of music that you've ripped from CDs, and like to organize them into playlist and then sync that music to your phone, then don't get a WP8 as there is no really good way to do this. As others have said in this thread, you can drag and drop music files from Explorer into your phone, but that's crazy if you have a large collection. If you still want to use Zune/Win7, you are forced to use the horrible Windows Phone App for Desktop software that just flat out looks like it was created in a summer high school computer lab project.

I really like WP8, I even like my Surface RT and Windows 8 machine...but XBM is flat out terrible. Microsoft really should be ashamed to put this out. Let's hope some of the Nokia people coming onboard can fix this mess.

 

[Hoku001]

@Piratelooksat40 - You've actually spoken to the GM of XBM?????? What's his/her name? I would LOVE to hear the reasoning behind team who came up with the insane XBM/WP8 integration. I'm sure MS employs good people, so it's gotta be some type of crazy corporate mandate, or sick internal turf battle, that produced this mess and is now "spinning" it as a feature. Sad.

 

[Piratelooksat40]

@Piratelooksat40 - You've actually spoken to the GM of XBM?????? What's his/her name? I would LOVE to hear the reasoning behind team who came up with the insane XBM/WP8 integration. I'm sure MS employs good people, so it's gotta be some type of crazy corporate mandate, or sick internal turf battle, that produced this mess and is now "spinning" it as a feature. Sad.

He was very apologetic and fell on his sword and said they did a horrible job of handling existing libraries and people that wanted to keep music on their phone. They were basically screwed when silverlight was killed(That was what Zune was written in) and they had to start over.

I worked at Microsoft a long time, I know that they are screwed and doing the best they can with the little that they have. If the company wants to put a bunch of resources and really make it great, they can, but I think they are putting just enough people and money on it.

 

[Hoku001]

He was very apologetic and fell on his sword and said they did a horrible job of handling existing libraries and people that wanted to keep music on their phone. They were basically screwed when silverlight was killed(That was what Zune was written in) and they had to start over.

I worked at Microsoft a long time, I know that they are screwed and doing the best they can with the little that they have. If the company wants to put a bunch of resources and really make it great, they can, but I think they are putting just enough people and money on it.

Wow, thanks for the insight! That's the most honest, candid thing I've heard regarding XBM. I know this is "hearsay" from an ex-employee, but I take you at your word and have no reason to doubt what you're saying. It's well known about the demise of Silverlight. Okay, so Zune needs to be scrapped because it's written in Silverlight...I'm no developer, but it seems as if you'd take the blueprint/feature set of what made Zune/WP7 good, add cloud matching, make it green (or orange), call it XBM and you'd have a winner.

Microsoft has talked about WP8 being the most "personal" of smart phones. Well, one of the most personal thing we do on our phones is listen to music...and the experience sucks. Let's hope Elop and company can get on the stick and put some resources against this. I'm sure this XBM manager is a smart man - but I'd be ashamed to say I managed this product.

 

[Piratelooksat40]

Sometimes you get dealt crappy hands, and you think that you can pull it out. I was there 17 years, and had lots of situations where I was talked into taking a job that I didn't have the resources to succeed, but I thought I could. Sometimes I did, sometimes I didn't. Every time I took a job, I was convinced I was going to succeed, I am sure that is what they were thinking. I am sure that he goes home at night and is proud of what he has down with the resources that he has. I am sure he is not ashamed of his teams work and product, but pissed about what he could do if he had the resources he needs. I don't know that for sure, I live across the country now and I don't know him personally, but I have seen it hundreds of times.

Unfortunately, Microsoft's formula, for most things today, is to give you less than what you need to succeed, and if you succeed, then great, if not, then they may give you more resources, or if you leave, or move on to another position, they may give the next person more resources. I left Microsoft about a year ago, and still have lots of great contacts and friends there and wish them the best. Most people outside of Microsoft place the blame of this on Ballmer but all of this is Kevin Turner's Walmating of Microsoft.