Goodbye Zune ... goodbye WP7.x music app?

[loribinca]

So there are issues with the Zune Marketplace - see my post yesterday - my marketplace and also artist bio and related artists no longer work on my lumia

The problem is deeper .. it's not working on the zune desktop either .. try it yourselves .. go to your music collection and select an artist .. then click on the 'more about ...' .. it used to take you to the zune marketplace to give you a bio and related artists -- this is probably where the phone is going too ..

You will see that it's broken .. for one of two reasons I speculate

1 - that whole FBI/internet thing that's apparently broken the internet
2- they're transitioning everything over to the "NEW" microsoft music service and they've disconnected this service from the zune desktop

if it's #2 - then hopefully this is an oversight and they will fix the links so that existing folks with zune desktop and windows 7.x phones get their functionality back

what concerns me is that they're not going to fix this and the answer will be to 'migrate' to MS Music - Zune is dead

Will they will patch the hooks for "MS music" into windows 7.5 / 7.8 - if not then it looks like we're getting left out in the cold from a music perspective and our phones now become just a basic mp3 player and we lose all the extra bits that made the zune media player so cool

I opened a support session with them last night on it and they said that it was not working for them either .. so even their own internal zune support folks are clueless as to what is going on .. incredible

 

[Seketh]

This is one of the things that makes it obvious that Windows Phone 7.8 will bring more than just the homescreen....

 

[mprice86]

All seems to be working as normal for me (UK); maybe it's just a regional problem.

I don't recall ever seeing an artist bio either on my phone or through the desktop software, but clicking "more about..." brings me to the right artist page and a list of their other albums. That's both on phone and desktop. (See attachment).

And before this turns into yet another tedious panic driven thread; of course WP7.8 will receive an updated music app to link in with Xbox Music - assuming that that is even necessary. The infrastructure is all there already anyway, Xbox Music (or just Music for other Windows 8 release preview users) is little more than a re-skinned Zune built into the OS.

 

[loribinca]

This is one of the things that makes it obvious that Windows Phone 7.8 will bring more than just the homescreen....

One would hope that it does ...

 

[loribinca]

All seems to be working as normal for me (UK); maybe it's just a regional problem.

I don't recall ever seeing an artist bio either on my phone or through the desktop software, but clicking "more about..." brings me to the right artist page and a list of their other albums. That's both on phone and desktop. (See attachment).

And before this turns into yet another tedious panic driven thread; of course WP7.8 will receive an updated music app to link in with Xbox Music - assuming that that is even necessary. The infrastructure is all there already anyway, Xbox Music (or just Music for other Windows 8 release preview users) is little more than a re-skinned Zune built into the OS.

Hi - i looked at that attachment - My Zune desktop used to display a lot more than that

it would look something like this picture - (found online - not at my desk at the moment)

http://www3.pcmag.com/media/images/173866-artist-page.jpg

that kind of information has totally disappeared from my zune desktop - so i am thinking the metadata it's pulling in is either broken due to the migration to microsoft music *or* something else that's failed .. the zunesupport twitter seems to indicate it's affecting a lot of people and as the windows phone hooks into this - its affecting that too (which was where I initially discovered the problem)

hopefully it's just a temporary outage - and not a "cut zune off at the knee's" type of thing

 

[mikeeemm]

I've been having a lot of issues with Zune lately. I've never liked Zune to begin with but that's another story. Recently songs have gone missing on my phone and the other day I deleted a playlist that contained songs that were on my phone before I made the list and half the songs were deleted. Hopefully this is due to a change being made and not just Zune acting up.

 

[Rick Vohra]

So there are issues with the Zune Marketplace - see my post yesterday - my marketplace and also artist bio and related artists no longer work on my lumia

The problem is deeper .. it's not working on the zune desktop either .. try it yourselves .. go to your music collection and select an artist .. then click on the 'more about ...' .. it used to take you to the zune marketplace to give you a bio and related artists -- this is probably where the phone is going too ..

You will see that it's broken .. for one of two reasons I speculate

1 - that whole FBI/internet thing that's apparently broken the internet
2- they're transitioning everything over to the "NEW" microsoft music service and they've disconnected this service from the zune desktop

if it's #2 - then hopefully this is an oversight and they will fix the links so that existing folks with zune desktop and windows 7.x phones get their functionality back

what concerns me is that they're not going to fix this and the answer will be to 'migrate' to MS Music - Zune is dead

Will they will patch the hooks for "MS music" into windows 7.5 / 7.8 - if not then it looks like we're getting left out in the cold from a music perspective and our phones now become just a basic mp3 player and we lose all the extra bits that made the zune media player so cool

I opened a support session with them last night on it and they said that it was not working for them either .. so even their own internal zune support folks are clueless as to what is going on .. incredible

I'm glad I stumbled upon this post...

My Lumia 800 and Zune Software from the last two days haven't been showing the artist bio part. I ended up refreshing both phone and software and now it seems I can't even download artist backgrounds that I already had.

Furthermore, when I select "Marketplace" for an artist in my collection, it just doesn't do anything. More annoyingly, when I query the same artist in Marketplace I see the list of albums including the one in my collection, however my phone seems to think otherwise...

I'm talking about artists like The Doors, Whitesnake, Ozzy... etc.

Hope for a quick resolution from MS!

 

[trickym81]

Everything works the same for me in Zune as it always has. I haven't noticed any of the above issues.

 

[loribinca]

I'm glad I stumbled upon this post...

My Lumia 800 and Zune Software from the last two days haven't been showing the artist bio part. I ended up refreshing both phone and software and now it seems I can't even download artist backgrounds that I already had.

Furthermore, when I select "Marketplace" for an artist in my collection, it just doesn't do anything. More annoyingly, when I query the same artist in Marketplace I see the list of albums including the one in my collection, however my phone seems to think otherwise...

I'm talking about artists like The Doors, Whitesnake, Ozzy... etc.

Hope for a quick resolution from MS!

Yup - it's completely broken - at this point I would be willing to put money on it being part of the move to Microsoft Music - I keep tweeting the zunesupport folks and they're 'aware of the issue' but dont have a time to resolution

my fear is that the bigger picture is that this is all part of the windows8/zune/phone rebranding/move and that all that Zune (and inherently the WP7.x) functionality is going to be put out to pasture with this scaled back functionality ..

 

[Rick Vohra]

Yup - it's completely broken - at this point I would be willing to put money on it being part of the move to Microsoft Music - I keep tweeting the zunesupport folks and they're 'aware of the issue' but dont have a time to resolution

my fear is that the bigger picture is that this is all part of the windows8/zune/phone rebranding/move and that all that Zune (and inherently the WP7.x) functionality is going to be put out to pasture with this scaled back functionality ..

Its back up for me!

 

[Laura Knotek]

It is working fine for me on my device and in the desktop app.

 

[greensea]

glad the related artist and similar albums are back. that's where i get a lot of my albums. go well with the zunepass all you can eat. a few click you can download and test drive as many albums as you like.

 

[elibohnert]

Read my HOFO post here. I found some new icons and stuff. Including Xbox Music. Some things I noticed!!

 

[CJ Thunder]

glad the related artist and similar albums are back. that's where i get a lot of my albums. go well with the zunepass all you can eat. a few click you can download and test drive as many albums as you like.

I never noticed it was missing and it is here now.

This is how I discover music as well and I am really surprised social still is not on WP.

 

[jmshub]

Everything works the same for me in Zune as it always has. I haven't noticed any of the above issues.

Same here. I use the Zune Pass on my desktop client and my phone at least once a day, and I have not seen any of these issues described.

 

[Verkunder]

A few of my artists, when streamed, don't show a picture anymore. Otherwise, still working.