Is the music app really that bad?

xconomicron

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I'm done with using Xbox music on my 1520 and 1020. I brought out the ole' Titan again for Zune.

On my 1520 the app would literally not open until I closed out of it the first time.

On my 1020... I've noticed that whenever I transferred the same music I had on my 1520's SD card to the phone, the metadata gets all f*****d up....causing songs to be split up.. (which btw should have all the correct metadata since I spent about 4 hours going through mediamonkey and correcting everything.

I figured I can't win here no matter how hard I try...I guess I'll play the waiting game till Xbox music becomes decent again....
 

Ed Boland

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Nov 17, 2012
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I'm done with using Xbox music on my 1520 and 1020. I brought out the ole' Titan again for Zune.

On my 1520 the app would literally not open until I closed out of it the first time.

On my 1020... I've noticed that whenever I transferred the same music I had on my 1520's SD card to the phone, the metadata gets all f*****d up....causing songs to be split up.. (which btw should have all the correct metadata since I spent about 4 hours going through mediamonkey and correcting everything.

I figured I can't win here no matter how hard I try...I guess I'll play the waiting game till Xbox music becomes decent again....
Nokia Mix Radio works perfectly!
 

Noahma

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"How is this even possible ? Just port the one from Windows 8.1 .. it seems decent enough "

It is the one from 8.1.... its a universal app.
 

Chin Voon Lai

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Just update to 8.1 two days ago and everything was fine after initial scare where the phone appears to be dead. Then today when I tried to play my wma audio files from music app most of the album could not play and only a few could be played. Downloaded Music Player app from the Store and it could play all my albums without any problem. Disappointed with the Music app in 8.1
 

Asskickulater

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The music app works just fine now. It's still in beta but I've had no problems with it. People here just like to cry and complain because the hub nobody used is gone. They also like to compare every music app to some zune thing. If zune was so great it would still be around.

This "some Zune thing" actually WAS an incredible player, and in all honesty SHOULD be around, it was killed off in favor of trying to merge everything under the xbox branding (the Zune hardware was a massive flop, despite being incredible, and damaged the Zune branding beyond repair) which is what fueled the change. You're arguement is broken, "If zune was so great it would still be around" here's the counter: "If zune was so bad, it wouldn't have a cult like following" Don't knock what you don't know, Zune was Microsofts BEST attempt at making a music player (far better than WMP) and is still my go to music player, try it sometime, you'd change your opinion in a heartbeat.

Now, on topic, first keep in mind the app is far from finished, when the 8.1 dev preview launched the app was in the same state it was when the 8.0 version was released (an alpha) the development of XBM seemed to have halted after the 8.0 preview was released and resumed upon 8.1 dev previews release, we have gotten constant updates since then and the majority of issues have been fixed, the black screen is rare (aside from maybe a small minority of users still) speed is still a bit sluggish but definately useable, swipe to change tracks has been implemented, the cover art issue still exists, though its improving. The live tiles were actually a side effect of taking the music app out of the system, live tiles like that could only be made with system apps back in 8.0 and 8.1, it wasn't til 8.1 update one that implementing that livetile was possible, and is expected to be added in the next update this Friday.

So all in all its a nice music player, it lacks a bit from the 8.0, and despite popular opinion, I much prefer its UI over 8.0 (nice throw back to the old Zune) and its only missing a few features, and it has gained some features that 8.0 never got, such as music scrubbing, and gapless playback is planned in a future update! So in comparison with the 8.0 app, I'd give it an 8/10 its almost there, give the live tile back, fix the metadata, and improve the performance a bit more and it will have surpassed the 8.0 app.

I'd recommend the update.
 

casaout

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I have no problems with the (XBox) Music app so far. It's fast for me, only occasionally lags/hangs and never crashed. I have about a 1000 songs stored on my phone. Guess, I am lucky...
 

TheNoise

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I'm on a 920 Lumia and for the past couple days the Music app won't load ANY music. The app loads, but then displays nothing/blank results for all my Playlists, Artists, Albums, Genres etc. The proper screen shows up and briefly says "loading..." at the top, but then the loading message goes away and nothing is displayed. All my music is stored locally on my phone, no streaming.

Up until now, it's been equally terrible on the 8.1 preview as it will literally take minutes to load the app itself (just sits on the green screen with the headphones icon). I'll force the app closed, and try again, and it'll still take just as long. That will happen when I'm not playing music, AND when I am already playing music. The dropdown volume and track skipping controls will work for the music I'm currently playing, but it will take forever to get back into the app.

The app is truly the worst.
 

TheNoise

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Here is the current situation for the Music app for me:

youtube.com/watch?v=HXmXlcKjyug

I spend two minutes trying to get the app to do anything... then switch to MixRadio for a few seconds to show that there IS music on my phone and that app loads it quickly... then back to the Music app to show how useless it is.
 

JJohnson1701

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Yes, the X-Box Music app is really that bad. And still that bad. I upgraded from 8.1 to 8.0 partly due to that (and a few other unwelcome changes, like removing hubs, social integration, replacing the cursor with a horrid barely working one, removing Bing Vision and Local Scout from search. I made a post about it - Windows Phone 8.1 Brings Unwelcome Changes | Windows Live space).

-Now Playing was made a pivot instead of its own screen, inexplicably.
-Swiping left/right to change tracks was removed, again inexplicably. They added up/down, but that's not the same and it doesn't match what people are used to. Someone seems hell-bent on keeping Now Playing a pivot. It makes no sense.
-It can't play audiobooks. Zune could. It was a hack with 3rd party software, but it could. XBM can't. Just put things with the genre 'audiobook' into an audiobook pivot! Then use sub-genre for the audiobook genre! "Drama," "Political," "Sci-Fi," etc. How hard is that?
-It can't play podcasts. For some odd reason, this was separated into another app that doesn't get updated all that much. No reason to have done this.
-It can't play video files. For some odd reason, again, this was separated out into another app when NO ONE was asking for this to be done. Just put them back together, Microsoft.
-No Live Tile. One Zune HD you got a beautiful flowing text screensaver with artist imagery. On Zune on desktop you got an album art swivel background, flowing text, and slowly changing colors. You also got a screensaver if you stopped your mouse of the artist images flowing across the screen with text and changing colors. The live tile for the Zune hub did the same. Then, nothing in the 8.0 hub or 8.1 music app. It's just an ugly green tile.
-No keeping the last played artist as the background. Zune Hub did this, and it's better looking than the stark, gray, dull, soviet-style background XBM uses.
-No equalizer within the app. It was added in 8.1, yes, but you have to leave the app and go to settings where it's buried to find it. Just link to it from within XBM.
-No gapless playback. This shouldn't be difficult to add, really.
-No channels. These were professionally curated playlists you could subscribe to that would update either every 2 weeks or every month so you could listen to fresh music based on your tastes
-No picks. Zune gave you picks based on your plays and likes
-No heart/broken heart system. This enabled picks and enabled Smart DJ to work based on likes/dislikes.
-No Social. You can't see what your friends are playing, and you can't share music with them.
-No Radio cart. On Zune you could listen to the FM radio and put songs you heard in the cart, so you could purchase them later. Great for when you get tired of your music, you can get new stuff by listening to the radio. Where's this in XBM? Oh, wait, they clove the app in twain and cut out the FM Radio ability. Then inexplicably changed Smart DJ to Radio, when everyone and their grandmother thinks 'radio' means 'am/fm' and not 'auto playlists.' Just change the name back already.
-Smart DJ was changed to Radio. Why? No idea. It's confusing.
-Zune never altered your metadata for you without your permission. X-Box Music does.
-Zune never refused to play a song because it couldn't find a cloud match. I have hundreds of remixes that aren't in the XBM catalog, and aren't available for cloud streaming, and due to only 16GB without microSD card support, I can't put all of them on my phone to compensate for that lack. And even then, when I play the remixes, such as "Girl from Ipanema Goes to Greenland (Extended Remix)" the software then believes it's playing the album version, and reports it playing the album version with the album version length, even though the remix is nearly twice as long as the original.
-Zune HD had parallax shifting. Tilt the device and the text/images on the homescreen would float left/right. Great touch.
-No listing the artist's music videos with the artist bio. Zune didn't do this, but 8.0 had it under buzz (odd choice).
-Doesn't utilize buzz for social media.
-Loss of the Zune HD interface. Really take a look at a Zune HD and it had little touches that made it better than X-Box Music. Play next to Music (play all in shuffle). Little micro-album art to tell how much music was in an artist or genre. Pictures under an artist for the lockscreen. Under a song, it had "artist "album title"" while XBM has just artist. No microtext under an album to indicate songs within an album. No + icon to add to a playlist. I could keep going here.

But you get the point. XBM lacks features that Zune HD pioneered, and then they seemed to throw everything out when NO ONE asked them to, and split one app into 4 or 5.

Do you see Apple going around saying, "Let's split iTunes into iTunes Music, iTunes Video, Podcasts, Radio, and iPhone Synch! Everyone will love that! And let's make sure we release it in an early alpha stage and claim it was final software! And our fanboys will still say it's magical, revolutionary, the best thing ever, and part of some grand plan!!" They don't because doing that would be stupid. And what Microsoft did was stupid. Put the apps back into 1, and drop XBM. The name "X-Box Music" to me, is synonymous with buggy, laggy, feature-poor, data-altering-without-permission software. It invokes intense ire, hatred, disgust, and sadness at what was lost. I hate it. I viscerally hate the software. Zune, I miss. Only when they fix every single thing on the list above will I then use X-Box Music again. And even then, I will demand they change the name back to Zune. Zune got it right. X-Box Music is an exercise in frustration and stumbling, bumbling incompetence.
 

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