My thoughts on Xbox music

[tcedwards]

Hello everyone, happy new years!
Now I would like to begin this with saying I have been using iTunes and an iPod since I was in the 8th grade ( 2nd year in college now). When I first pick up my windows phone, and tried to sync my music (had a bad class for SD card didn't realize it atm) it was a big pain. But now that my music is synced, and I am a active Xbox music pass member, I could see this service being the best thing yet.

Streaming any song you want (on the marketplace) is very nice. They way I work is, if its a really good song that I like I'll buy it, if its somewhat good I'll download the DRM version, everything else gets streamed. I like being able to pick what songs I want to stream. The discovery feature (smart DJ) works ok, but I'd rather use Nokia music / iheartradio/ last.fm for discovery.

Somethings I'd like see would be playlist creation improved, better syncing with the computer, and better cloud base services (ie getting my old music from iTunes to anything that runs Xbox music).

Xbox music I believe is otw to be something great, its just not quite there yet. What would you like to see in Xbox music?

 

[profet]

Without the following:

• Sonos Integration
• Windows 7 PC Client support
• Mobile Playlist Creation
• Mobile Playlist Editing

Spotify will be the better service. We know they will have all of the above on day one.

 

[Bryan_J]

The three biggest things I'd like to see are:

• Better syncing (I'll throw ghost playlists in here)
• A metadata system that doesn't destroy my collection
• A bigger selection of music outside the mainstream

Oh and an end to this type of thing...seriously, why does it do this? I promise you I didn't buy two of these!

 

[MikeInBA]

I generally like my Xbox Music. The only real big issues I have had is

• Syncing non-drm songs across devices
• Playing DRM songs when no internet connection is present.

That last one set me off real good. On a flight to visit my mom, i fire up my 920 that has a ton of music downloaded to it, not streamed. Get on the plane, pilot gives the go ahead to turn on device, I fire up my 920 and....nothing. I go to the "now playing" section and see that its just skipping thru all the downloaded DRM music, spitting out some error. So on the flight there and back im stuck with only 2 non DRM albums that i had previously copied over.

 

[gsquared]

XBox Music will need some time to get it working properly. I tend to think of it as "Looked good on paper" endeavors.

 

[Bryan_J]

xbox music will need some time to get it working properly. I tend to think of it as "looked good on paper" endeavors.

lol

 

[pulkit10]

While Xbox Music is visually appealing, they've taken away the Zune software which was great at managing your collection and replaced it with a half-done "Music" client. That's my major gripe with the way Microsoft has handled this one. Apart from that:

• Metadata handling needs work.
• No way to tell apart a song that was streamed vs. a song in my storage from the main screen.
• Need a better client to handle music. Don't want to use a 3rd party client to do something that Zune did so well.
• That dreaded "error playing the song, haven't acquired the rights" error - I'm sorry Microsoft, this should all be worked out in the background. Really tragic flaw.
• Not being able to share a pass on multiple phones.
• Sort of related but not being able to sync purchased videos FROM MICROSOFT to my Windows Phone kills me. I realize that this has been mentioned countless times before but I am still having a hard time wrapping my head around the sheer stupidity at display here.

They had a great working solution with Windows Phone 7 where Zune behaved like a better iTunes and did all the nasty work for you. Now, in the pursuit of making it more 'flexible' they've botched the experience up.

 

[philxor]

I generally like my Xbox Music. The only real big issues I have had is

• Syncing non-drm songs across devices
• Playing DRM songs when no internet connection is present.

That last one set me off real good. On a flight to visit my mom, i fire up my 920 that has a ton of music downloaded to it, not streamed. Get on the plane, pilot gives the go ahead to turn on device, I fire up my 920 and....nothing. I go to the "now playing" section and see that its just skipping thru all the downloaded DRM music, spitting out some error. So on the flight there and back im stuck with only 2 non DRM albums that i had previously copied over.

Yeah they need to do like Spotify and allow 30 days, or at least one day of grace period on the DRM tracks instead of constantly checking. Would eliminate issues with trial renewals as well, I ran into that one.

 

[Bryan_J]

Yeah they need to do like Spotify and allow 30 days, or at least one day of grace period on the DRM tracks instead of constantly checking. Would eliminate issues with trial renewals as well, I ran into that one.

Or maybe just do what Microsoft themselves did until they turned Zune into XBM and have the DRM be good for your subscription period. It is amazing how many different backward steps we've taken.