What are your thoughts on Xbox Music?

Coke Robot

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Xbox Music - Xbox.com

It's official, it's a post-Zune era. :cry:

I've been using the beta app since the RTM was released, I'm holding some reservations until the final build is released on the 26th. Honestly, I've been spoiled by Zune, if you're not a Zune user in any way shape or form from the desktop software to the player itself, Xbox Music might seem pretty cool. But to me, Zune is still king and will be until I get a Windows Phone 8. The sucky part is that Microsoft is keeping Xbox Music exclusive to Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 oddly.

The thing I have my reservations about is the UI in general and the Now Playing visualizer. UGH... It's like Zune lite. Install the Zune software and play a song from a pretty popular artist like The Beatles or LMFAO and go the Now Playing visualizer, it is audio/video glory. It's straight up GORGEOUS. Xbox Music, not so much. Zune's UI is so neat and so metro and so refined, Xbox Music to me feels like Zune 2 or something. It's not eloquent. It looks kind of good, but not great. I HATE the sidebar that by default appears and takes about 40 percent of the screen and I HATE how the album mosaic just HAS TO HAVE random album covers from the Marketplace like Green Day, or Lady Gaga, or justin beiber. If you're not online and you do that, it just has awful icons in place of them. And the color filters for the album mosaic is just bleh. It's worse than using the Zune with literally no graphical fluff to it whatsoever. What also I don't like with it is that in Zune, the Now Playing visualizer would have scrolling, translucent text of the artist's bio with the amount of times that song has been played and/or just have huge text of the band name and song title and it would all be animated. It made for something you can literally sit and watch, it's just very cool and interesting. None of that with Xbox Music as far as I can tell. Navigation is another story altogether, Zune still wins.

I don't know, it probably will be better, just as Zune 1 isn't like Zune 4.8. But gee, it'll be a rough transition as some things will be lost, some things will be gained. I have an attachment to Zune with not only it being awesome, but without the Zune player itself and without the software counterpart, we wouldn't be here today discussing Windows 8 like this. Without it, Windows Phone wouldn't had happened the way it did. That part of Microsoft might had been gone forever. Without it, Windows 8 wouldn't had undergone the hugest UI changes in almost two decades. Without it, the Xbox probably wouldn't be hugely poised as a cable box replacement and wouldn't have a huge role other than just gaming. Without it, we wouldn't be here discussing tablet PCs and oogling at the Surface tablets. Nokia would probably gone bankrupt as Windows Phone wouldn't be there to give the company a breath of fresh air that might just in fact save it. If it weren't for a failed mp3 player that came far too late after the ipod and wasn't a good iteration until it was just too late, it wouldn't had given rise to many different things and wouldn't had given rise to a new Microsoft ecosystem that compared to others, just doesn't exist. There isn't one that has TV and gaming, PC computing, and powerful mobility like this. To me, Zune is still king.
 

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For starters, I think the name is terrible. Many who don't own an Xbox are going to think that this isn't intended for them.

I never bought into the whole Zune thing. It royally pissed me off when they abandoned the whole "plays for sure" campaign and released their zune player and software. The fact that their own device had to have a sync style application like iTUnes rather than just being able to use something like Media Player was just ludicrous. I always preferred my Create Labs zen devices where I could drag and drop my music, or sync from Media Player, or Media Monkey if I chose to do so.

As far as music subscriptions go, I'm not really a fan. I've just barely gotten to the point where I am willing to pay for digital music versus buying the physical disc. I've always preferred just buying the CD, ripping it in whatever format I choose and going on my merry way. But I've found with Amazon MP3, that I can save quite a bit of money on my CD's, and also not have to physically store anything. Not to mention, actually finding new CD's in stores is becoming harder and harder.

I guess I would rather own 100 CD's that I listen to over and over again, then have access to 10,000 CD's, many of which I don't listen to at all, or just once.
 

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I agree with Coke. The Windows 8 player is nice, but if you're a previous Zune user, there's something missing.

Here's hoping it will receive updates from time to time and bring back the beautiful viewer.
 

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My thoughts on the Music App so far is that it sucks because it can't play the songs I've already downloaded with my Zune Music Pass, I had to install the Zune software in order to play it on my Windows 8 laptop. Oddly enough though, if I download a song with the Music App it will play that song.
 

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I can't sign into Xbox music thru my XBL US account on W8, I also set my windows region too US but still no go..:eek:
 

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Ok, so since the Music App wouldn't play any of my Zune Pass previously downloaded music I thought I would uninstall the App and re-install. Well, after uninstalling I went to the Store and the Music App is nowhere to be found. I can install the one from CP because it's actually listed in Your Apps but it doesn't work well nor does it get upgraded. I'm wondering now if there are a lot more Apps then it seems in the Store and Microsoft is hiding them until the official release.
 

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X Box = GAY!!!
 

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Seriously?

I think it's very ordinary right now, even with the latest update which came through this morning.

The service they use for metadata is even worse than that of the Zune desktop application. I've seen spelling errors (the Beatles Pleace Pleace me!), my compilation albums have been destroyed by breaking them down into single track albums, half of it wont sync with the cloud service, album art is wrong/missing, album titles are wrong, multiple versions of 1 album version which I assume to be USA's but I have a different version being from OZ, and other than trusting the same org that stuffed my collection up to begin with, I have very little opportunity to rectify this.

Until this is fixed, I wont upgrade my desktop to Win 8 as I want at least 1 set of albums correct.

NB: The music collection that is trashed is on my server which is set aside for my windows phone only. The 2nd set is on my desktop and appears to be solidly remaining with iTunes unless MS sort this out.

Now I find that the best of Elvis Costello album has been renamed Painted From Memory by Burt Bacharach. FFS!!!
 
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Well, I got my Music App back. Basically I re-installed the preview version again from "Your Apps" and this time instead of installing the Preview it actually installed the latest version.
 

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Just installed the latest version....

I so far like the Smart DJ and music streaming abilities like Pandora does. It ACTUALLY shuffles music better, can't tell you how many times I've been annoyed at the SAME song in the same shuffle list that needs to be reshuffled. I also can't complain on how it uses less system resource overall.

It's........................................................ugh......

Seriously, the UI hasn't been improved a lot. The Now Playing visualizer, it's better, but oh my gosh....it's not that great. Not like Zune AT ALL. Still HATE that Bio sidebar that comes up EVERY time when you hit Now Playing from the Dashboard. If I click that, that means I want it FULL SCREEN. Even still, the visualizer doesn't seem too complete, it's just shapes and colors, and it's just weak. Zune's visualizer is phenomenally better than this. Good grief. Things are glitch but I think that's just due to my idiotic networking issue that seems to always happen at night than anything. I've only got the visualizer to work with Smart DJ, not with local music. I'm confused. Out of any app, I'd would had figured the Music app would had received at lot of attention and would be coded in such a way so when one switches back to it, it's not like all "Oh where did I leave off?" type of thing. So far, I'm not impressed. The app does deserve its three star rating, it's not great. It's OK, if it was an initial beta release, but seeing as this is the final public release, man oh man. This isn't good.

I'll play with it further to see if anything gets better, but gee, if I could, I'd stay and stick with Zune until it can't ever be used. It's more dynamic and immersive than Xbox Music, looks, acts, is, and manages things better. The only con with Zune is that it pushes the CPU to the max, which I'm not too keen on.
 

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With the changes in DRM and the fact that the Music App cannot play music already downloaded from Zune Pass makes it a useless App at this point. Add to that the inability to add network locations to the Music Library, which was is an issue in W7 as well, makes the experience bad also because no music shows up in My Music. If you have Windows Phone 7 you still need Zune or you can't sync music to your phone, but then if you get a new Windows Phone 8 device you can't use Zune to sync music anymore you have to use Windows 8 sync which can't access Zune downloaded music.

It's a messy transition for Zune Pass users.
 

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With the changes in DRM and the fact that the Music App cannot play music already downloaded from Zune Pass makes it a useless App at this point. Add to that the inability to add network locations to the Music Library, which was is an issue in W7 as well, makes the experience bad also because no music shows up in My Music. If you have Windows Phone 7 you still need Zune or you can't sync music to your phone, but then if you get a new Windows Phone 8 device you can't use Zune to sync music anymore you have to use Windows 8 sync which can't access Zune downloaded music.

It's a messy transition for Zune Pass users.


I had no problem playing Zune Pass music from the app last night after a clean install. All I did was copy my music folder to an external, install, then move it back.

I really like the app after limited use.
 

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