Windows Phone and Music: Tips & Tricks

[jomarr]

As far as play counts go if the playcount is stored in the file, when you transfer the file that information will transfer too, but there are no applications I can find - Xbox Music and Nokia Music just give options to add files to now playing or delete a file - that will show you any detailed information about a file at all so while the information is likely to be there it will be mostly useless and won't be displayed or influence how your phone plays music at all.

Playlist order from what I can tell in playlists created in Windows Media Player at least, always play files in the order they were added to the playlist.

I've tried to setup a photo playlist to sync automatically in Windows Media Player - and you can be quite specific about which files are synced when etc but once you get the files on the device it shows up at a playlist so you only get music applications trying to open photo's which never works. As far as I can tell there might be a way to do what you want using Skydrive. Setup the pictures you want to sync in a Skydrive Album and sync them to your phone. If you're using another person's phone I think you might be able to sign in to your own Skydrive using the Skydrive app and download the album you want to sync there. I've yet to try it out completely but let me know if it works if you have time to try this fully before I can.

Hope any of this helps!

Thanks! I hope one day they'll let us synch our music. It will be a plus for me! I was used to itunes with my iPhone. I'm switching tomorrow to a 920. Can't wait.

 

[Muessig]

Added another section about using Skydrive to sync different files and folders as requested by dgr_874

 

[MikkaZ]

Nice thread!

To duplicating: one doesnt simply delete everything from music folder on phone(Lumia 820) with no card, without getting read write permision error.
Anybody had the same problem?

 

[Guzzler3]

Nice thread!

To duplicating: one doesnt simply delete everything from music folder on phone(Lumia 820) with no card, without getting read write permision error.
Anybody had the same problem?

Reboot the phone, then try re-deleting the offending files/folders.

 

[ITF]

I've been doing a bit of experimenting because the song duplication issue is really annoying for me (I always listen to whole albums, so song duplication is a deal breaker). I've come across some interesting behaviour, and (I think) a consistent way to stop it from happening.

Some background first: I have a Lumia 520 and keep all of my music on a 32GB microSD card. I sync just using drag-n-drop/cut-n-paste in Windows 7 x64. All of my songs are in mp3 format (a lot of albums are in FLAC, but I convert them manually beforehand) and I keep all of the tagging neat, tidy and consistent using mp3tag. The folder structure of my collection is Artist\Album\Track - Title.mp3. All of the Xbox Music stuff it turned off so it doesn't mess up any of my hard work.

I think the problem occurs when you try to sync too many songs at once, like dumping your entire music library onto your phone at once. My collection is only 696 songs/7.4GB and it almost always produces duplicates when I transfer all of it, regardless of whether I format the SD card beforehand or not. When I was testing out different things trying to find the cause (e.g. playing with tags, doing things in a different order, etc.) I started transferring smaller numbers of songs so I didn't waste 30 minutes at a time to see if something worked.

I'm not sure if it has to do with the number or the physical size of the files you transfer or even the number of folders, but I found that by syncing less than about 120 songs or 1.20GB at a time, duplication wouldn't occur. Whenever I did get duplicates, I deleted the files and the offending albums from the hidden Music\Albums folder on the Phone storage (not the SD card), then I disconnected the phone from USB and checked that they were indeed deleted in Music+Videos. Redoing the transfer but with less songs worked every time.

TL;DR only transfer around 120 songs/1.20GB at a time (the problem may be number of files or total size, I don't know). It's a painstaking process, but it worked for me. Maybe not so feasible for those with big libraries though.

 

[armaco]

For the duplicated songs my trick is extract SD, connect directly to PC and then copy the song/albums that I want. Finally return the SD to the phone. That's the only way I found to solve the doubled songs

 

[Gurggles]

Maybe this is an old shortcut, but there is a great short cut to get to music from the any app or from the lock screen.

A) Wake screen, if at lock screen

1) Tap volume control
2) Double tap the media drop down
3) Now you are in "Now Playing" in your phone.

I found this and thought it was the biggest duh moment with my phone.

 

[anon(5914335)]

Has anyone found a player app that has decent local library/media management and does gapless playback?

 

[slalom]

I have a lot of music on a 32gb SD card in my Samsung Ativ S (>6000 songs!). I don't currently have this music resident on a PC. Is there anyway to create playlists directly on the phone connected to a computer via USB without loading all of the music onto a PC and synching?

 

[mikju29ro]

I have a lot of music on a 32gb SD card in my Samsung Ativ S (>6000 songs!). I don't currently have this music resident on a PC. Is there anyway to create playlists directly on the phone connected to a computer via USB without loading all of the music onto a PC and synching?

yes, there is a workaround to create a playlist directly from the phone. Choose a song to play, while it is playing navigate to your songs list on the phone and click the multi select icon on the bottom menu. Check all the songs you want to add and click the menu voice "add to Active playlist" under the 3 dot menu. Now Save Your new now playing song list and give a name to Your new playlist !

 

[Muessig]

Maybe this is an old shortcut, but there is a great short cut to get to music from the any app or from the lock screen.

A) Wake screen, if at lock screen

1) Tap volume control
2) Double tap the media drop down
3) Now you are in "Now Playing" in your phone.

I found this and thought it was the biggest duh moment with my phone.

Great to see that the advice in the OP is working for you!

 

[slalom]

yes, there is a workaround to create a playlist directly from the phone. Choose a song to play, while it is playing navigate to your songs list on the phone and click the multi select icon on the bottom menu. Check all the songs you want to add and click the menu voice "add to Active playlist" under the 3 dot menu. Now Save Your new now playing song list and give a name to Your new playlist !

Thanks....this is helpful. Any way to to create a playlist with phone connected to PC? I have a lot of songs and it is a bit tedious to navigate through all of them on the phone.

 

[McVitas]

How do I jump to a certain position while playing a song? Tapping on a progress bar in "now playing" doesn't do it. Is it possible this can't be done? What if I listened partly to an hour long podcast and after a phone restart I want to continue from the middle?

 

[Muessig]

I added a few new sections to the OP. I've addressed a program called MusicBrainz Picard to help properly tag your files, how to get to the 'Now Playing' screen quickly from outside your music app and how to navigate to a certain part of a file quickly.

 

[Lee B]

Playlist order from what I can tell in playlists created in Windows Media Player at least, always play files in the order they were added to the playlist.

!

So does this mean there's no simple way to rearrange the sequence on a playlist? I have language lessons which are all labeled in a numerical format. When I sync via iTunes to Apple devices, they're always in the right order, but on my Nokia 822 they seem to be in a random order. It's a real nuisance to bounce from, say, lesson 17 to lesson 9 and then to lesson 12, etc., unless I manually intervene to get to where I want to be. Using file manager on my PC, I can bring up the 822 file list and sort by title, which makes them look as if they're in the right sequence, but that doesn't seem to change the reality on the Nokia. A fix for this would be a huge help.

 

[Muessig]

For me albums play in the right order, but if you are relying on a playlist to play lessons in the right order you have to add the files in sequence from 1 to 10, say, when you make the playlist. This way when you tell the playlist to play it should do it in order.

I think we need to keep our eyes out for some more duplicate files fixes, as there still seems to be issues for some people even after trying what's in the OP.

 

[WhyFiNYC]

A correction - 320 kbps is not the bit rate that you get from a red book CD (stereo, 16-bit, 44.1kHz sampling rate) - it's 1411 kbps. Even with lossless compression (like FLAC), it's common for the bit rate to be in the 700 - 1100 region.

 

[WhyFiNYC]

After wrestling with getting music on my phone for a while, I just turned off the "Connect with XBOX Music" and drag/dropped my files on to the phone. I'm not going to have the cool wall papers and band bios, but that's a small price to pay to not have XBM messing up my tags and causing album splits.

 

[pma]

Thanks for the thread. I learned a few tips that will come in handy. Man, the music player function sure could use some work.

one thing to add: with a lumia, I wouldn't use Dolby.

Why not use Dolby headphone enhancement? I think the music on my 928 generally sounds much better with the enhancement turned on. The Nokia EQ however is quite sucky. It's a PITA trying to move the levels up and down. Also my notifications are noticeably louder than the music - music needs a volume boost. Maybe I need to turn the volume leveling option off.

 

[Corey Thomas]

I've been creating playlists using my 920 but the playlists don't sync to the web (music.xbox.com) or to my W8 machines. Any ideas on getting my Xbox Music playlist from WP8 to sync with all the other devices/web?