Listening to music on WP?

[trinkner]

Hi folks,

I'm a Symbian 808 user looking to change to Windows Phone shortly. A major concern is the music experience in WP. I've read a lot of discouraging comments online, but was hoping this forum could help me.

What I want:

1. App to play 320kps MP3 files from both the internal phone memory and SD card. I don't need to play other formats.
2. A clean, fast app to play my music using Nokia's Dolby headphone processing.

My concerns:

1. Xbox Music and Nokia Music seem mainly useful for streaming from their services. I want a light-weight, fast music player for locally stored MP3s.
2. A bug in WP seems to duplicate song entries in its music database. Is this common, or just an experience by a few people?
3. The music player apps I've found on the Windows Phone Store all seem pretty weak (no offense meant, developers) or slow (according to user reviews).
4. Moving music from a desktop to a WP device seems nightmarish, according to forum posts. I typically just drop my files from Windows Explorer to my SD card or internal memory on my Nokia 808. Can I just do the same with a WP? Would this simple technique prevent the song duplication?
5. Is it really so difficult to put playlists onto a WP? I have about 100 playlists that I'd like to have the phone. Again, with the Android and Symbian stock apps, this was nearly instantaneous and fluid: just copy the m3u file and you're done.

I experimented with a Galaxy S4 in December. Although I returned the phone because of poor camera performance, the music experience was awesome. The default music app immediately recognized the files on my SD card, including the playlists. Album art was nice and large. The screen was clean. The app was fast. There was no messing about; it just worked. The same, by and large, is true of the stock music app on Symbian Belle.

Can I get that type of hassle-free, light-weight, fast music experience on WP? Or will I be forever reformatting my SD card and taking hours to reload my large music collection? Will I have to suffer through apps that are mostly designed for streaming services?

I probably use my phone more as a music player than I do as a phone. (I know, I need to get our more... ). I don't want to spend $600 on a new WP only to be bitterly disappointed in the music experience.

I don't care about features that will look up a band online or supplement my audio experience with extra features. I just want to play the music easily, see the album art displayed nicely, and navigate my collection quickly. All my tracks are tagged consistently.

Thank you very much

 

[xandros9]

I loaded music onto my sisters Lumia in both the internal memory and the SD card with no problems.

Dolby is triggered in the settings, the normal Music+Videos app fits my needs just fine, others may disagree.

Nokia Music and the default media player are just fine for local media too.

Personally, I haven't had the duplicate song issue until it popped up on three of my newly added songs. I didn't really care though as it wasn't much in my library of just shy of 1000 songs.
but that's just me

I simply drag-dropped my music onto my 920 and my sisters 521 with no issues. Didn't stop the duplicates from appearing, but I had no complaints otherwise. Seemed a bit slow in browsing files though.

Dont know about playlists .

As for album art, if it doesn't pop up, which was an issue with my library (where iTunes had the art)
I used an app called MPAtool which helped add art.

 

[ArthJar]

None of those things you mentioned have been an issue for me. The only thing I can recall is the song duplication, which only presents itself when you're using an SD card. Transferring songs from your PC to your phone shouldn't be an issue either, just drag and drop.

 

[trinkner]

Thanks. I expect to have 64GB of music on my SD card. The potential duplication from the SD card is a key issue for me. Also, all my tracks have embedded 500x500 album art. I don't use iTunes. On my desktop, I use Foobar2000.

 

[ArthJar]

I believe there is a fix for that, but I don't know much on that since I don't use an SD card.

 

[trinkner]

No, there's not a fix yet. It's discussed a lot on other forums on WP Central, as well as Microsoft's user forums. People have been pulling out their hair over this issue for a long time. It seems mostly (exclusively?) to happen on phones with SD cards. The model of the phone doesn't seem to matter, as long as there's an SD card.

 

[avi_amartya]

If you are going to use the windows phone companion app for desktop then this duplication thing won't happen. I can confirm this because I also have a huge music collection and store them on a sd card.

 

[shmsnh]

I find both apps - Music+Videos and Nokia MixRadio - sufficient for my needs, which is basically listening to the music I have on my phone.

About the music duplication issue - I've faced it once, and it happened when I swapped my microSD card. There seems to be something wrong with the way the app indexes the files. So, I believe as long as you don't swap cards often, you'll be fine. You can drag and drop files to add on your phone, but I recommend deleting songs through the Music+Videos app.

 

[trinkner]

Thanks for the response, avi-amartya. A few questions:

To load your mp3 files to your SD card, did you start with a freshly formatted card and then fill it using only the WP companion desktop app?

When you add new music, have you tried downloading them from SkyDrive? I do this a lot when I've added new music to my desktop and don't want the hassle of wiring my phone to the desktop.

Can you have music on both your SD card and your internal memory? Or does WP require to you to choose one or the other? I'd like to have music on both types of memory so I can maximize the number of music tracks on my phone.

I have about 100 m3u playlists. Have you used the companion app to sync playlists, too? If a track appears in more than one playlist, does the companion app copy the track twice to your phone?

thanks very much

 

[trinkner]

Thanks, shmsnh. If the library database files become inaccurate, can you delete them and have the phone successfully recreate them, without having to reload all the music files again?

 

[shmsnh]

Thanks, shmsnh. If the library database files become inaccurate, can you delete them and have the phone successfully recreate them, without having to reload all the music files again?

In my case, I had to add the files again. But I had about 2 GB of music then, so it was manageable. Also, I don't have access to the app (it requires Windows 7 or later), so I don't know if the app could have helped me.