Zune pass - Omnia 7 General

When I buy my omnia 7 I thought I'd start using zune pass. It says I have access to unlimited downloads, is this true or is it limited to a certain number per month?

With a Zune Pass, you can download almost all the music in the Zune Market Place.
BUT...
You can only play them on a PC, a Zune or a WP7 device thats linked to your Zune Pass.
If I remember correctly thats x3 PC's and x3 Zune's i'm not sure how many WP7's. Although 5 are allowed in the Zune software.

Indeed, just to add to ZaForD's comments, you can only play the music for as long as you are paying for your Zune Pass. You can download as much as music as you like, but the files are DRM-protected; if you stop paying for Zune Pass, the DRM kicks in and the files are basically 'disabled'. They'll still exist as media on your computer, phone etc, but they're only enabled to be listened to while you have an active, paid-for subscription to the Zune service.
If you want to download files that don't have this kind of limitation (e.g. if you want to be able to copy music onto a microSD to use on your Android phone as well as your Windows Phone), you can buy DRM-free MP3 files from Zune instead.

I mix and match, i bought a zune pass for a year upfront and will next year while i have this phone.
I find the zune pass is great for downloading/streaming everything new i see/hear and getting new albums you might not want to have paid for after you listen to it, I've listened to 34 albums on this zune pass so far and bought 3 of them to keep forever without DRM and too be able to bring them over to the mixing table.
For the price of zune pass for a year to download "anything" it's a bargin if your like me and spend more than around £8 a month on music lol but sometimes regret some album buys after hearing one track on the radio ect....

Can anyone tell me whether you can stream music over 3G or if it's only available via wifi?

yosnoor said:
Can anyone tell me whether you can stream music over 3G or if it's only available via wifi?
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Connects over 3G/WIFI downloads them too the phone whenever you want them. SO you can delete them.... when out and about later with a friend and remember the track and wanna show them, redownload without any problems and play ect...

Hmm, sounds ideal for me.
I didn't actually know you could buy a year's subscription, and now I've looked into it £90 is a bit steep.

Incidentally, can you burn music downloaded with a zune pass to CDs?

I've never tried this, but I don't see why it wouldn't work.
As the software/device checks your user rights before it plays the songs.
So where there stored shouldn't matter.
@gcaw
Thanks for filling in the gaps

Not that i condone it in any way, but if you try know how, it's easy to sort out...
I look at it that the £90 gives you 10 free downloadable MP3's a month you can keep forever without DRM.
So thats 100 DRM free MP3's a year for £90 and all the rest of the free downloads while you have Zune Pass... as I said, I use the pass to find out what i want to download.
Then mostly buy indervidual MP3s as i'm not an albums person unless it's "epic", i don't waste space with an album of a band i like one song just to say i have the album....
If money isn't an issue for you, then this method isn't a problem i've found for unlimited music downloads and listening pleasure. I can and still buy single MP3s and always will i just love the fact for £90 a year i get "unlimited" music

mwako said:
Not that i condone it in any way, but if you try know how, it's easy to sort out...
I look at it that the £90 gives you 10 free downloadable MP3's a month you can keep forever without DRM.
So thats 100 DRM free MP3's a year for £90 and all the rest of the free downloads while you have Zune Pass... as I said, I use the pass to find out what i want to download.
Then mostly buy indervidual MP3s as i'm not an albums person unless it's "epic", i don't waste space with an album of a band i like one song just to say i have the album....
If money isn't an issue for you, then this method isn't a problem i've found for unlimited music downloads and listening pleasure. I can and still buy single MP3s and always will i just love the fact for £90 a year i get "unlimited" music
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About the 10 free songs thing, how do you know how many you have left to keep or which ones you have selected to keep etc.

Just to be clear, the 10 free DRM-free MP3 downloads offering is exclusive to US Zune customers; it's not available in the UK, Australia or other Zune markets, to my knowledge at least.
Also, to answer an earlier question, you cannot burn subscription music from Zune Pass on to a CD. The monthly fee that you pay for Zune Pass is only for the right to listen to music through the Zune service; you're not buying the rights to listen to the music elsewhere on a non-Zune device, such as a Zune HD, Windows Phone or Xbox 360.
If you want to be able to burn music from Zune on to a CD or on to a non-Zune device like an Android phone or another music player, you must purchase the music as DRM-free MP3 on a per-track or per-album basis.
Zune Pass = access to Zune stream/download service only; you're not buying the music, so you can't take the files elsewhere.

gcaw said:
Just to be clear, the 10 free DRM-free MP3 downloads offering is exclusive to US Zune customers; it's not available in the UK, Australia or other Zune markets, to my knowledge at least.
Also, to answer an earlier question, you cannot burn subscription music from Zune Pass on to a CD. The monthly fee that you pay for Zune Pass is only for the right to listen to music through the Zune service; you're not buying the rights to listen to the music elsewhere on a non-Zune device, such as a Zune HD, Windows Phone or Xbox 360.
If you want to be able to burn music from Zune on to a CD or on to a non-Zune device like an Android phone or another music player, you must purchase the music as DRM-free MP3 on a per-track or per-album basis.
Zune Pass = access to Zune stream/download service only; you're not buying the music, so you can't take the files elsewhere.
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Nope you get 10 in the UK aswell.... as i said
They download as WMA from "Zune Pass" so everything plays them, Even VirtualDJ *thought i left that in my last post, but seems not*
As i said i don't condone nor control what you do with them. If you know how DRM works, it's not exactly taking apart a human with a spoon is it ?
But as i pay for it years on end i don't give a rats what other people do.

mwako said:
Nope you get 10 in the UK aswell.... as i said
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Well, no, that's not actually the case.
If you're getting ten free in the UK, then you must be a special case. I live in London, and I bought both my Windows Phone and my Zune Pass here, and I don't get the ten free MP3s.
There is no mention of the 10 free DRM-free MP3s being made available to UK customers on the UK Zune.net website.
Look at the Zune Pass US page where, below the main black banner, you'll see three sub-headers - Anywhere You Go, Unlimited Music, and Keep 10; "Keep 10" mentions the 10 free MP3s feature, and this is repeated in the feature list below, and terms related to this feature are given in the small print at the bottom. On the Zune Pass UK page, the "Keep 10" sub-header is missing, as is any mention of it in the feature list or in the small print.
Additionally, Microsoft states on this page that "the offer in the U.S. will remain at $14.99 per month for unlimited downloads and streaming access, with the ability to keep 10 MP3s per month", but does not make the same assurance for UK customers.
Under footnote 8 on the same page, it explicitly states that the "keep 10 MP3s per month feature available to U.S. Zune Pass subscribers only, on their PC or Windows Phone 7".
I'm not disputing that you're somehow getting the 10 free MP3s in the UK with a UK-purchased account, but that's clearly not the norm, which is why I'm trying to make that fact clear to other users, who can't reasonably expect to get something as part of the package that most other users aren't getting, and which Microsoft isn't promising.
mwako was right about being able to play Zune Pass music on other devices - but only devices that support Windows Media DRM. Those devices need to be able to sync to Zune or Windows Media software to update their DRM subscriptions (usually every two weeks or every month). If the DRM subscription is not updated within that period, the DRM validation 'expires' and the media become unusable until the validation is updated.
However, the original question was about being able to burn Zune Pass subscription music to a CD, and the answer to that is no.

Well not sure how, but i get them lol. I've been signed up for a while now so can't really say why... just do... sorry, thought it was the norm as it's not just me, thats the only reason now i keep paying, as i said it's an album a month for free and i don't listen to albums, more tracks then mix with them. so Zune Pass is great for that. 320kb most tracks, for an audiophile it's bliss on this phone with it's audio decoder and a cracking set of headphones.
I can't agree more you can't burn DRM protected music to CD lol. *sigh* i'll just leave it at that for you.

With Zune Pass, do you download songs to the phone?Or can you only stream them,thereby needing to use your data allowance everytime you listen to a song?

You can choose to download the songs to your computer and then sync them with your phone; or download directly to your phone over the air; or stream them to any Zune Pass enabled device (Windows Phone, Xbox 360, computer).
If you're worried about preserving your data allowance, the best way is to download songs to your computer and then sync them to your phone.
If you download the songs, they're stored on your phone/computer until you remove them. If you stream them, they're not stored locally. If your Zune Pass expires/is not renewed, any songs that you've downloaded will remain on your device until they are deleted; i.e. they don't 'self-destruct', they just 'self-disable'.

Basicly exactly same as gcaw said....
saldawop said:
With Zune Pass, do you download songs to the phone?Or can you only stream them,thereby needing to use your data allowance everytime you listen to a song?
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From Site - go get the trial pass...
https://live.zune.net/en-GB/account/buySubscription
***Your Zune 14-day Trial Pass gives you unlimited access to millions of songs at Zune Marketplace. Stream on Xbox 360 and stream/download on your PC, Windows Phone 7, and Zune player as many songs as you like and listen to them for the duration of your trial. You won’t be charged: your trial pass expires after the trial period. It does not automatically convert to a Zune Pass subscription. To continue enjoying Zune Pass after the trial, you'll need a full Zune Pass. Some songs and other content in the marketplace are not available via Zune Pass. Available content may vary over time.***
And yes... download uses your dataplan if your on 3G and not wifi, if you at home or ANYWHERE with public wifi. just turn off data connection and use WIFI.
t-mobile 3GB allowance is nice. it's like 764 songs "IF" you could/wanted that many in a month....

I can't seem to find out how to download songs on my phone. I can see how to buy them, but I don't see an option to get the DRM-protected version for free.
I can see the option on my computer however, just not on my phone; am I missing something?

Antiskunk said:
I can't seem to find out how to download songs on my phone. I can see how to buy them, but I don't see an option to get the DRM-protected version for free.
I can see the option on my computer however, just not on my phone; am I missing something?
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNCDJLSP_Fw
from 0:48 secs is the bit i think your referring too ?
*ignore the end about conspiracy theories lol* i'm sure this is one of the things they will listen too *hope*

Related

AOL Music Subscription Works on Hermes!

..........
I've been wanting to get a subscription service that will stream to mobile devices (I mainly use Rhapsody on my pc, and it too will NOT work with mobile devices even though you have the option to use it through a browser-based interface) so I read your post and signed up for the 30 days trial, and sure enough it works over 3G as well.
The only problem I have is when I go to the main page through PIE on my Tytn, it automatically goes to a mobile version of the site, and I can only select certain artists that have been pre-selected based on my genre settings. There is a search line at the top where you can enter artist or album, but there is no Enter or Go button, and pressing Enter on the keyboard does nothing. In other words, I can't navigate to any specific artist, I can only listen to the pre-selected ones. Do you know how to get that search bar to work? If I go to the page on my desktop pc, the interface is totally different and getting to a specific artist is no problem.
I'm not sure what to tell you on the WMP thing... I have no issues with WMP thus far...
Neither of you have tried orb? I can't say enough about it...all of your mp3's on your PC at home are available to you on your phone 24/7. The only drawback is getting the mp3's and always leaving your PC on. It works the same way- you choose your song and it streams to WMP. This will also work for Videos and TV (with the proper setup, slinbox is far better though).
I haven't had any problems with this using wmp.
Patman,
Yes I do have Orb and use it quite a bit, and I do love it!! I stream my music and my recorded TV from my media center pc at home. BUT, the reason I wanted a subscription-based service on my phone is because you can stream any song, any artist any time. I own about 6,000 mp3's that are on my harddrive on my pc at home that I can stream on Orb, but with a subscription-based music service like AOL or Rhapsody, I have the choice of about 2.5 million songs, on-demand, at my fingertips.
stpete111 said:
Patman,
Yes I do have Orb and use it quite a bit, and I do love it!! I stream my music and my recorded TV from my media center pc at home. BUT, the reason I wanted a subscription-based service on my phone is because you can stream any song, any artist any time. I own about 6,000 mp3's that are on my harddrive on my pc at home that I can stream on Orb, but with a subscription-based music service like AOL or Rhapsody, I have the choice of about 2.5 million songs, on-demand, at my fingertips.
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Yeah I figured there was a reason.
Does it cost anything per song, or is it a time-based ($xx.00/month) service?
I'm glad others are interested. Subscription music means you pay a flat fee per month (usually around $10) and you can listen to any artist, any album, any song in their entire library whenever and (hopefully soon) wherever you want. It's the holy grail IMO as far as portable music. Especially when you don't want an iPod/MP3 Player, but rather a convergence device like this. The problem is that the flash memory is very slow, and very space limited. Streaming music from a subscription service is the way to go. Orb is a great idea, but you still have to download the songs first. Me personally, I'm fed up with downloading organizing and managing music files. It's just become tedious. I'd rather have a jukebox available at all times with every artist in existence. In other words, I'm sick of collecting music. The new technology has made me look past that.
As I mentioned, AOL Music Now is the only web based service, thus the only one that can work on Windows Mobile (Rhapsody has a web browser plugin but it only works on certain desktop browsers).
Good news though. I just discovered (or is it brand new?) that Music Now supports RSS feeds. This could really be the answer to a having a solid experience using the streaming from a subscription music service on a PPC.
You can save an RSS feed of just about anything. All the artists in your library, your playlists, all the albums, all the songs, top 20 lists, etc.
I'm about to try and find an RSS reader for WM5 that might make this a reality. Even if one doesn't exist that works well, the RSS provides an open source for others to make a music browser type interface. Who knows what will happen. One could potentially make a program for WM that reads the RSS feeds and lets you browse, select, and play music much like the interface on an iPod or something. The difference being you have up to 2 million songs to choose from at any given time.
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Vibrant+Zune Pass = Works!

Some forewarning: I tried this a few months ago and it didn't work. I am currently running Bionix-V. I have tried this on two Windows 7 machines and it worked on both. I do mean Zune Pass protected content too, not just the phone showing up in WMP as a syncable device.
Here is what I did:
1. In USB Settings, set it to prompt. Simply setting to Media Player should also work.
2. Connect to PC. In my case drivers where installed as it was the first time I had connected the phone since putting Bionix-V on there. The MTP application should start up automatically and connect.
3. After driver installation the auto-run dialog appears. The top option for me is Sync digital media to this device using Windows Media Player
4. After a few moments you should see the vibrant in the top right corner as a syncable device. The Next Device link will allow you to sync to the SD card.
5. Either wait for the slow as hell media search to find/update media, or simply use Windows Explorer to drag and drop into the right pane.
6. Sync!
7. A subsequent reconnection using this procedure resulted in WMP not finding the device. Repeating steps 1 and 2 was enough for WMP to find the device.
So that's what I did. Depending on response I may come back and put up a better guide. The moral of the story is that it's at least possible, possibly after a bit of star alignment since this previously didn't work. I just did this today so I'm not sure how updating the DRM time-bomb works, worst case is delete/re-add.
confused
I'm confused...
Are you talking about using your Vibrant with the Zune Pass service? (unlimited music downloads $x/mo, DRM makes sure music only plays when subscribing)
Does the Vibrant understand the Zune DRM? (I would find that surprising)
Are you just talking about the Vibrant showing up as a music device in Windows Media?
Robert
I pose the same question....
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
Sorry for the confusion.
I do indeed mean that it accepts Zune Pass DRM'd WMA's. The Zune software won't work with it (it's strictly for Zunes). The key is using WMP. I honestly think the whole thing is a loophole in how WMP works with the Zune Pass content. I've used this method on a Cowon DAP for the last year or two. I wouldn't be at all surprised if WMP was actually downgrading the DRM to one of the older, more standard ones. Based on experience with my Cowon DAP though, the DRM is definitely still intact after being transfered to the device.
I'm not sure why it works now when it didn't work before though. Previously WMP wouldn't recognize my phone, even though the MTP app was running.
Further info for you, just checked the details in the default Music Player app on one of the tracks. Media type is audio/x-ms-wma. Further down is a "Right Status" section with the data
Type: Date
Validity: - 2011/3/16 22:44:36
yea, I've been doing this since I first got my phone. The songs do expire if you cancel your subscription or don't sync with Windows Media Player for a while - and there are quite a few songs that won't sync (because of their DRM licenses). It works ok though. Good enough if you want some of your music with you all the time.
Honestly, I love the Zune Marketplace subscription service and have always just been m'eh on my player. Still I find I use my Zune more for music than my phone though because with the player I can have all my music with me. I wish there was an Android Zune app, but we all know that will NEVER happen.
megatherian said:
yea, I've been doing this since I first got my phone. The songs do expire if you cancel your subscription or don't sync with Windows Media Player for a while - and there are quite a few songs that won't sync (because of their DRM licenses). It works ok though. Good enough if you want some of your music with you all the time.
Honestly, I love the Zune Marketplace subscription service and have always just been m'eh on my player. Still I find I use my Zune more for music than my phone though because with the player I can have all my music with me. I wish there was an Android Zune app, but we all know that will NEVER happen.
Click to expand...
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You could always use audiogalaxy to stream all your music from your pc to your phone over the network
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App
Zune Pass
Does this work with Andriod, WMP?

Google Music or Amazon Cloud Player

So I got my Google Music beta invite and I'm trying to decide whether I should trust my music to the cloud with Google or Amazon.
Normally I embrace everything Google.
So far the only feature I have seen in Amazom MP3 that I like better is I can download a song from the cloud to my EVO from within the app, I haven't seen that feature yet in Google Music app. Does anyone know if it is something that can be done? Future build maybe?
Another thing that would steer me towards Amazon is the pricing, with Google Music still being in beta, there is no telling what the pricing will be once this service is officially launched. I know that if I buy the minimum storage capacity for $20 per year on Amazon I can upload unlimited music files.
Yet another question in my mind is will Google abandon Music? Not all of their products make it out of beta and remain supported.
So what is everyone else's take on the two services and the Android apps associated with them?
Has anyone else chosen one service over the other and why?
Just like to get a little feedback before I spend a couple days uploading my music collection to one service or the other
I've been trying both. I like Google Music a lot, but there's one big problem I have -- if you're not on a solid connection, it downsamples it instead of buffering until it can play it. To me audio quality is worth waiting for, so I need an option to not have it do that. Even worse, it caches that downsampled file, and won't try to re-download a high quality version unless you go manually delete it. And since it doesn't cache the files with descriptive file names, that's a problem too. Other than that, I like Google Music a lot. It does have an option to cache songs for offline play. Though not perfect, I like the app's UI pretty well.
I haven't used Amazon as much, in part because they initially rolled it out with limited storage. As you've said, they are now offering unlimited music storage for $20, though that is "for a limited time." I don't know what exactly that means, and I haven't started uploading my full collection there yet. I have a huge music collection (17,000 songs), and almost all are legitimately ripped from my CD collection. I don't buy a lot of MP3s, but when I do it tends to be from Amazon. Before introducing the unlimited storage option, the fact that songs you bought from Amazon didn't count against your space was a really smart move. I do plan to upload my full collection now that it's unlimited music uploads too. I haven't formed an opinion of their app's UI yet.
My solution before these came on the scene was Subsonic, and for the most part it still is. That has the advantage (and disadvantage) of streaming directly from my home computer. The advantage is that it's free (I can't imagine either Google or Amazon will give unlimited storage forever, though who knows). It has the disadvantage of going away if my home computer crashes or my home internet goes down, though neither of those happen often for me. The UI for Subsonic is passable, but not great (it's improved in the last few releases though). If Google fixes the audio quality problem, or if Amazon works out well, I could see myself shifting to either of those. But if in the future they decide to charge for tiers of storage (I need > 100GB), I'd imagine I'd head back to subsonic.
jackslim said:
So far the only feature I have seen in Amazom MP3 that I like better is I can download a song from the cloud to my EVO from within the app, I haven't seen that feature yet in Google Music app. Does anyone know if it is something that can be done? Future build maybe?
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when in the high level view, if you press the menu button you can choose items to 'make available offline' I think this is similar to what amazon does.
The main plus to amazon is the store front and instant availability to add new music.
I got an invite to spotify. For 9.99/month you get unlimited access and mobile app usage. They have a ton of music on there. I figure I probably spend about $10 a month on music, so why not put that towards spotify and get access to anything I want. The downside to this is that if I quite spotify, I get no take home. Kind of like renting vs owning a home.
I had my google music account for a couple months. To me, it's a complete disappointment. It's slow. real slow. a week to upload 2k songs. Plus the loss of quality over bad connections (which is all sprint has).
I finally said screw it and closed the account. I use AudioGalaxy on my server to stream music. It blows Google music out of the water.
SilverStone641 said:
I had my google music account for a couple months. To me, it's a complete disappointment. It's slow. real slow. a week to upload 2k songs. Plus the loss of quality over bad connections (which is all sprint has).
I finally said screw it and closed the account. I use AudioGalaxy on my server to stream music. It blows Google music out of the water.
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**** took longer than that for me, I actually had to stop it a few times due to the bandwidth is was hogging in my house to upload. If you have a decent connection its great, i haven't tried it on 3g as of yet since I have wifi at work.
Jfree3000 said:
**** took longer than that for me, I actually had to stop it a few times due to the bandwidth is was hogging in my house to upload. If you have a decent connection its great, i haven't tried it on 3g as of yet since I have wifi at work.
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Exactly! And i have a great connection, 24mpbs on Uverse and STILL it sucked up all my bandwidth. It just wasn't logical anymore.
SilverStone641 said:
I had my google music account for a couple months. To me, it's a complete disappointment. It's slow. real slow. a week to upload 2k songs. Plus the loss of quality over bad connections (which is all sprint has).
I finally said screw it and closed the account. I use AudioGalaxy on my server to stream music. It blows Google music out of the water.
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I have an Asus RT-N16 router with Tomato, do you still have to have a PC on to use Audiogalaxy? I am assuming yes after doing a quick search.
Nick N said:
I have an Asus RT-N16 router with Tomato, do you still have to have a PC on to use Audiogalaxy? I am assuming yes after doing a quick search.
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Thats correct. There's a small agent you have to install on the host computer. You point the agent towards your music directories and voila. it shares.
i've used both.
Google music is infinitely better.
My reasoning:
1. Currently letting you upload 20,000 songs for FREE
2. Integrates with the stock 3.0 android music player. so it blends your online and offline music perfectly.
3. Stock 3.0 music player is actually very well done. Amazon music player is ugly and not to intuitive
4. Since it runs off of google music app, you can scrobble what you listen to to last.fm.
5. The organization of the online interface is much cleaner than amazon.
6. You can sync folders on your computer or NAS to automatically update you're google music with no effort.
I honestly can't think of any reasons amazon is better.
I also usually embrace all things Google, but Google music, i've found, is running constantly in the background. I don't like that. I realize the program wants to keep synced with the server/home computer, but it could refresh upon opening instead of constantly running. The audio is questionable, and for some reason it seems to consume more than average power on my phone.
Amazon is okay, but as already stated, it is not very appealing or intuitive.
For streaming I tend to use Audiogalaxy. No storage charges because it streams from your computer. Works extremely well. The downside to something like Audiogalaxy is if for some reason your computer is down, no streaming music.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA Premium App
I use both. If you buy one album off Amazon they upgrade you to unlimited storage for music.
I only have about 10,000 songs anyway.
I use subsonic primarily and Amazon if my PC or home internet goes down. Then as a last resort Google music beta.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA Premium App
After trying both I can say that Google music is superior to AG in many ways. I don't mind keeping my 1000 watt rig off when I'm out or working. Took me four full days of uptime to upload 13k of songs on a 16mbps connection. when I add a new album the update is quick and painless. The only problem like someone said isGoogle music down sampling to the point of mono audio. In which case I got used to clearing the music cache and download Que on the app.
Sent from my non-rooted bloated 2.3.3 OG Evo using XDA App
Well one good thing about Google Music is you don't need to have your desktop/server running to play music. As mentioned before, my only gripe was the amount of time and bandwidth it took to upload my music.
bkrodgers said:
My solution before these came on the scene was Subsonic, and for the most part it still is. That has the advantage (and disadvantage) of streaming directly from my home computer. The advantage is that it's free (I can't imagine either Google or Amazon will give unlimited storage forever, though who knows). It has the disadvantage of going away if my home computer crashes or my home internet goes down, though neither of those happen often for me. The UI for Subsonic is passable, but not great (it's improved in the last few releases though). If Google fixes the audio quality problem, or if Amazon works out well, I could see myself shifting to either of those. But if in the future they decide to charge for tiers of storage (I need > 100GB), I'd imagine I'd head back to subsonic.
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I looked at optons like this before, but I don't have a home pc to leave running all the time. I do everything on my laptop, which I either close when I'm done with or at times is out and about with me. This is why a cloud service seemed appealing.
pandamaja said:
when in the high level view, if you press the menu button you can choose items to 'make available offline' I think this is similar to what amazon does.
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I will have to check this out, this sounds like what I was looking for, if for instance I create a playlist while I'm out that I want to download and make always available on my EVO.
I ended up going with Google Music mostly because I have a soft spot in my heart for their services. So far the upload hasn't been too painfull. I'm currently about halfway through my collection of ~10,000 songs
google music
google music due to the instant playlist feature and also because its free for now
SilverStone641 said:
It's slow. real slow. a week to upload 2k songs.
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I wonder if this is an indication that the service isn't scaling very well. I got in on the Beta during week 3 and was able to upload 45GB of music in less than a week... let's call it 4 days to be safe, but felt more like 3.
jackslim said:
Another thing that would steer me towards Amazon is the pricing, with Google Music still being in beta, there is no telling what the pricing will be once this service is officially launched. I know that if I buy the minimum storage capacity for $20 per year on Amazon I can upload unlimited music files.
Just like to get a little feedback before I spend a couple days uploading my music collection to one service or the other
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Does Beta net you free or reduced storage rates? Should have read more before I agreed...
Wow I actually got an education reading this thread! I had no clue about Google music...love the last.cm scribble! --- it's invite only? Anyone like to hook me up, please? PM me? ;D. I'd also never heard of subsonic. I'be been using Winamp remote, which is less than perfect. . Thanks dudes!

My WP8 music sync story...

So, I got home with my Lumia 920, plugged it in to my PC, and found it does not sync with Zune. In my Zune library I have about 16k songs, and about 10 auto-playlists based on songs I "like", most played, etc. So, I figured its not the end of the world, and I downloaded the WP8 sync client for Windows 7 from here http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/how-to/wp8/windows-phone-app-for-desktop . This app is an extremely basic sync application that reads your entire music library every time it loads and allows you to select music and playlists to sync. For it to load completely, and go through my entire music collection, took about an hour. BUT, when it was done, I was able to select my artists and auto-playlists to sync, and they synced fine. So, a few hours later, I plugged my phone in again... the app had to reload my library again, and didn't save any auto-sync information... so I cant just plug my phone in and forget about it. This is very, very weak sauce... not so much for artists, but for auto-playlists, which is the primary way I listen to music.
So, then I decided getting all of my music into the XBOX Music cloud is the way to go, as that music automatically shows up on the phone. So, I took an image of my w7 machine, and upgraded to win8. I then opened the xbox music app, and nothing showed up, even though my libraries were configured. Why, you might ask? Well, my music is on a network share that doesnt support indexing, so microsoft has deemed it useless. No video or music from that store will show up in my native microsoft video/music applications. Sigh... ok, fine. So, then I copied 100gb of music to my data drive, and it showed up in the xbox music app fine. Then, in the xbox music app, I went to the playlists tab, and nothing showed up... BUT there was an "import playlists" button. So I went ahead and clicked that, and that imported all of my auto-playlists... which then shortly after showed up on my phone as well in the xbox music app, as they were synced to the cloud. So I figured I had finally gotten it, but I wanted to run one test. So, I opened my zune software, and marked another song as "liked", making my "songs I like" auto playlists go from 269 songs to 270. I then rebooted, and opened xbox music again, and the "songs I like" playlist would not update. So, it seems the import only imports the playlist as static, and not "auto". So, I figured I would try deleting all of them, and importing again. While that would be extremely clunky, I could deal with that. That worked, and the updated "songs I like" playlist showed up... but now they have a (2) after them. As a geek, that drives me crazy, so I wanted to go on and try another, automagic, solution.
So, I opened WMP, and let it import my music collection. No zune auto-playlists showed, so I created them in WMP. However, now WMP wont sync half of the songs on the autoplaylists, because the songs are "not supported by device". These are .wma zunepass songs... however, it will sync SOME .wma zunepass content... just not all of it. I havent figured out what it will and wont, yet.
So, thats where I am at now. WMP is working well enough, for now... definitely not a permanent solution. My biggest issue, now, is that I dont know if song plays on the lumia 920 will register in WMP, and there is no way to rate the songs on the lumia.
Oh, and one more thing, I listen to a podcast that doesnt (and wont) show up in the xbox podcast library, and there is currently no native solution for custom podcasts.
To summarize... Frankly, XBOX Music sucks. Ok, great, now music is in the "cloud" and we no longer have to plug in a cable. With wireless sync, we werent that far off from that anyway, and at least then we still had full zune functionality. Right now, XBOX Music doesn't even begin to compete with the likes of spotify, etc... XBOX Music is a very, very, basic solution for listening to music. For the most part, your only option is searching for an artists and listening to an album of theirs. Playlists are manual, and you cannot rate music, period. For me, that's enough reason to use another service with more functionality.
I didnt create this thread as a flame MS thread. Obviously, I like MS... I went to the ATT store 10 minutes after it opened to get a lumia 920, and I had a lumia 900 before that. I want this software to improve.
I feel your pain. Not as big a collection. Not sure how this works completely with xbox music in cloud. But I did the trick on my surface to show external music on microsd to show in libraries.. I am seeing playlist and some of my music in the cloud.
loudog3114 said:
So, I got home with my Lumia 920, plugged it in to my PC, and found it does not sync with Zune. In my Zune library I have about 16k songs, and about 10 auto-playlists based on songs I "like", most played, etc. So, I figured its not the end of the world, and I downloaded the WP8 sync client for Windows 7 from here http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/how-to/wp8/windows-phone-app-for-desktop . This app is an extremely basic sync application that reads your entire music library every time it loads and allows you to select music and playlists to sync. For it to load completely, and go through my entire music collection, took about an hour. BUT, when it was done, I was able to select my artists and auto-playlists to sync, and they synced fine. So, a few hours later, I plugged my phone in again... the app had to reload my library again, and didn't save any auto-sync information... so I cant just plug my phone in and forget about it. This is very, very weak sauce... not so much for artists, but for auto-playlists, which is the primary way I listen to music.
So, then I decided getting all of my music into the XBOX Music cloud is the way to go, as that music automatically shows up on the phone. So, I took an image of my w7 machine, and upgraded to win8. I then opened the xbox music app, and nothing showed up, even though my libraries were configured. Why, you might ask? Well, my music is on a network share that doesnt support indexing, so microsoft has deemed it useless. No video or music from that store will show up in my native microsoft video/music applications. Sigh... ok, fine. So, then I copied 100gb of music to my data drive, and it showed up in the xbox music app fine. Then, in the xbox music app, I went to the playlists tab, and nothing showed up... BUT there was an "import playlists" button. So I went ahead and clicked that, and that imported all of my auto-playlists... which then shortly after showed up on my phone as well in the xbox music app, as they were synced to the cloud. So I figured I had finally gotten it, but I wanted to run one test. So, I opened my zune software, and marked another song as "liked", making my "songs I like" auto playlists go from 269 songs to 270. I then rebooted, and opened xbox music again, and the "songs I like" playlist would not update. So, it seems the import only imports the playlist as static, and not "auto". So, I figured I would try deleting all of them, and importing again. While that would be extremely clunky, I could deal with that. That worked, and the updated "songs I like" playlist showed up... but now they have a (2) after them. As a geek, that drives me crazy, so I wanted to go on and try another, automagic, solution.
So, I opened WMP, and let it import my music collection. No zune auto-playlists showed, so I created them in WMP. However, now WMP wont sync half of the songs on the autoplaylists, because the songs are "not supported by device". These are .wma zunepass songs... however, it will sync SOME .wma zunepass content... just not all of it. I havent figured out what it will and wont, yet.
So, thats where I am at now. WMP is working well enough, for now... definitely not a permanent solution. My biggest issue, now, is that I dont know if song plays on the lumia 920 will register in WMP, and there is no way to rate the songs on the lumia.
Oh, and one more thing, I listen to a podcast that doesnt (and wont) show up in the xbox podcast library, and there is currently no native solution for custom podcasts.
To summarize... Frankly, XBOX Music sucks. Ok, great, now music is in the "cloud" and we no longer have to plug in a cable. With wireless sync, we werent that far off from that anyway, and at least then we still had full zune functionality. Right now, XBOX Music doesn't even begin to compete with the likes of spotify, etc... XBOX Music is a very, very, basic solution for listening to music. For the most part, your only option is searching for an artists and listening to an album of theirs. Playlists are manual, and you cannot rate music, period. For me, that's enough reason to use another service with more functionality.
I didnt create this thread as a flame MS thread. Obviously, I like MS... I went to the ATT store 10 minutes after it opened to get a lumia 920, and I had a lumia 900 before that. I want this software to improve.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I can't help but totally agree with you. This is a major oversight, especially since they didn't ease us off the Zune Player...
Well, after a few days WMP started tanking explorer.exe when trying to sync with my phone. So, I reverted to my win7 image and im using the windows phone app preview to sync music again.
un-fawking-beleivable. My computer kept tanking while trying to sync music, and I found out why. To sync, you have to unlock the phone, which I knew... but, if the phone re-locks while your syncing, the whole process is done for, and explorer will just hang until you remove the phone. SO, if you want to sync to your pc, you basically have to turn off the password lock on the phone.
I have the exact same way of organizing and syncing my music as you have. We're probably not alone and I hope this is somewhere high on the priority list.
Like you, I came from Zune with several smart playlists, most of them including the 'love track' option. It was a step back from iTunes with its 5 star range that let me create even more precise smart playlists, but it worked.
No Spotify in WP8 either, at least not for me. Can't find it in my marketplace. Last year I sidestepped to Spotify, hanging in after a good tryout deal, but Spotify lacks a lot of the songs I have listed in my playlists. So I was ready to move to XBOX Music, same idea, more songs - I had read somewhere. Jumped in with the one year deal, too quickly, too confidently.
Now I'm stuck with renaming formerly smart playlists and some songs that won't play because of some errorcode. No clue how to keep my playlists uptodate with ratings. Mind you, I've only been messing with this for two days. Time to go looking for workarounds while praying for a software update.
Guys, try MusicBee.:good:
This is a sad story, but I guess this is how it's "supposed" to be. I mean, MS kinda started from scratch (again) with their WP8, so they had to create some quick and working apps for basic needs (WP8 client). I think in time everything will get back, hopefully implementing WP8 support in Zune.
I for one I am very happing not having to fire up that Zune app everytime I want to deploy something on the phone, thought the Zune music was fine (especially with that zune pass).
PS: did you try with the Metro-style WP app?
This makes me think I should get another device for music... I have about 15gb of music I carry with me. Using Zune, its not a problem. Using something that needs to index everything at launch and not keep track of things already on the device is a problem.
In an effort to loose the "computer" requirement, they lost some basic features.
Sent from my SGH-i917 using Board Express
You could always use Google music? There's 3 decent apps in the store that work efficiently enough. Google music's uploader is optimized for...shudder...iTunes, but you can manually select folders, playlists should upload too as long as they're in the same folder. Of the three apps, I use CloudMuzik. Back in WP7 it worked BETTER than the google music app for ANDROID. Not sure now, I've only had my phone one day, but that's my suggestion.
Google's song limit is 20,000 songs, and you can have multiple users on the same account. "I really like your music library!" "Oh, really? let me hook my account up!"
Is it me or is Apple the only ecosystem that makes media synching simple across all computing devices? As an Android user, Google music is tolerable, but not great. After reading your experiences I feel like adopting WP8 would be a misstep in this regard at this point in time. Sad how behind and out of touch with the consumer market MS has been. I too hope these weaknesses become a priority with MS, especially with the launch of their next gen console this year.
How hard is it to develop official native apps that allow music (and other media) with playlists to sync seamlessly across pc, tablet, phone, and game console without having to pay the piper for cloud storage? Its 2013 for gosh sakes. Every operating system ecosystem should have this implemented and polished by now. It's not breaking news that media junkies want their data accessible on all their devices in an easy to manage manner.
I'm very tempted to invest in Apple as an ecosystem for simplifying this solution. I really hope by some miracle MS can sway me before my cell phone contract is up later this year. Honestly I want to believe they can do better than the offerings you folks are currently left frustrated with.

Music Syncing Is HORRID!

This is a MAJOR problem and if they want to avoid people returning their phones within 30 days, this needs to be fixed. If someone is coming from iPhone, they will be totally lost on how to get music to their phone. In reality, it would be via XBOX Music but the entire experience is horrid and let me explain:
No Real Way To Sync - Yes, you can use Windows Media Player but it will not sync ZunePass/XBOX Music Pass songs.
Album Art - Spotty at best if you use the Windows Phone app to transfer music. If you download straight your phone, it seems to be OK
XBOX Music Cloud - What a mess! What is this info anyway? It isn't like Google Music and all of our music. It seems to be metadata from the main PC or Zune Software. I'd love to sync playlists and music between my devices but this thing is an absolute mess. Right now, I have this turned off on my devices.
Playlist Creation - Not only can't we sync our playlists from our PC (Zune Playlists) but you can't create one on the phone. And I once tried to create a playlist (streaming) so it would sync between my devices and it never showed up. Just the aforementioned mess in the music cloud shows up.
Delete Music Off Of Phone - Is it me or is there no way to remove music off the phone from the phone itself?
This is not a gripe session but legimtate broken things that need to get fixed. At the VERY least, get a fix for Windows Media Player so it can sync ZunePass songs!
Are you using windows 8? Its flawless on Windows 8
Sent from my RM-820_nam_att_100 using Board Express
robstunner said:
Are you using windows 8? Its flawless on Windows 8
Sent from my RM-820_nam_att_100 using Board Express
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I just discovered the DESKTOP version of the phone software...not perfect but MILES better...
I don't want to throw this thread off track, but I have GB upon GB of music in flac and mp4 music. Stuff not purchased on Xbox or other, by and large it's ripped from my disk collection. Does all that sync if I put it on my Win8 desktop AND play properly? Oh, I have some ogg stuff too... was deciding on what format to store my music in
Thanks!
garak0410 said:
I just discovered the DESKTOP version of the phone software...not perfect but MILES better...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What desktop version? Is this the full Zune replacement available online?
charlatan01 said:
I don't want to throw this thread off track, but I have GB upon GB of music in flac and mp4 music. Stuff not purchased on Xbox or other, by and large it's ripped from my disk collection. Does all that sync if I put it on my Win8 desktop AND play properly? Oh, I have some ogg stuff too... was deciding on what format to store my music in
Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can add mp3 files from any location and they will play properly. You can also search for he album art but I do agree that the new metro software is nothing on Zune. Zune was the best media software ever!
garak0410 said:
I just discovered the DESKTOP version of the phone software...not perfect but MILES better...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can you explain this a bit please? Are you referring to Windows 8, or Windows Phone 8?
Thanks!
There is also a glitch. You cannot download music to your phone when it is already in your "Cloud collection". So I'm stuck with streaming everything for now....
XATAGuy said:
Can you explain this a bit please? Are you referring to Windows 8, or Windows Phone 8?
Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
He means this...http://www.windowsphone.com/en-GH/how-to/wp8/windows-phone-app-for-desktop
tonyfreak215 said:
There is also a glitch. You cannot download music to your phone when it is already in your "Cloud collection". So I'm stuck with streaming everything for now....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
you can download cloud music, longpress on it and select download, also when you are in a song list, there is the first option for multiselect at the bottom, you can then check whatever you want and download it all at once.
garak0410 said:
This is a MAJOR problem and if they want to avoid people returning their phones within 30 days, this needs to be fixed. If someone is coming from iPhone, they will be totally lost on how to get music to their phone. In reality, it would be via XBOX Music but the entire experience is horrid and let me explain:
No Real Way To Sync - Yes, you can use Windows Media Player but it will not sync ZunePass/XBOX Music Pass songs.
Album Art - Spotty at best if you use the Windows Phone app to transfer music. If you download straight your phone, it seems to be OK
XBOX Music Cloud - What a mess! What is this info anyway? It isn't like Google Music and all of our music. It seems to be metadata from the main PC or Zune Software. I'd love to sync playlists and music between my devices but this thing is an absolute mess. Right now, I have this turned off on my devices.
Playlist Creation - Not only can't we sync our playlists from our PC (Zune Playlists) but you can't create one on the phone. And I once tried to create a playlist (streaming) so it would sync between my devices and it never showed up. Just the aforementioned mess in the music cloud shows up.
Delete Music Off Of Phone - Is it me or is there no way to remove music off the phone from the phone itself?
This is not a gripe session but legimtate broken things that need to get fixed. At the VERY least, get a fix for Windows Media Player so it can sync ZunePass songs!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
to delete music off the phone longpress the song (or use the multiselect button and check songs, keep in mind, the multiselect icon only shows up in song view) and then choose delete or the trash can.
i agree the software needs to improve a lot, i'm quite surprised that it was released in a state that isn't even at parity with the zune software. it does seem like they are trying to push people away from using sync software and more into using cloud services to do it all though, but they need to work on UX a bit more before that is going to be simple for new users.
Since I have two laptops and a surface with the same music. Each day i am seeing music show up on phone. Since I don't have either one up for very long I think it will take awhile. I may just have to turn off standby this weekend and let it sync.
I got the lumia 920, and I love it. However, the music sync is SO bad I am considering bringing it back and using my lumia 900 agian. Its absolutely awful. There is no way to rate music, no auto playlists, and about 97% of the time I try to sync music using the godawful windows phone desktop application it hangs trying to remove music. The only way to keep the process going properly is keeping my phone screen awake, awesome.
I am a long time zune user, which I beleive to be the best music device and desktop software made, and I cannot believe that instead of just changing the name of the zune software they ditched it altogether, and all functionality with it.
loudog3114 said:
I got the lumia 920, and I love it. However, the music sync is SO bad I am considering bringing it back and using my lumia 900 agian. Its absolutely awful. There is no way to rate music, no auto playlists, and about 97% of the time I try to sync music using the godawful windows phone desktop application it hangs trying to remove music. The only way to keep the process going properly is keeping my phone screen awake, awesome.
I am a long time zune user, which I beleive to be the best music device and desktop software made, and I cannot believe that instead of just changing the name of the zune software they ditched it altogether, and all functionality with it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
cannot agree more with you. Let's hope they change it for the better.
The Windows Phone 8 desktop app does NOT work at all on my HP laptop running Windows 7 x64. Every time I plug my phone in, an error message pops up on my laptop screen saying, "Windows Phone has stopped working". It gives me the option to, "Check online for a solution and close the program" - that does NOTHING! If I click on that, it seems to be searching for a bit, then just goes away by itself, never offering me a solution to the problem.
The only way I can put music on my phone is to drag-and-drop through Windows Explorer, and THAT'S a disaster, too! Let's say I have 2 CD's/albums from The Airborne Toxic Event; 1 shows up on the phone listed (under Artists) as "The Airborne Toxic Event". The other shows up as "Airborne Toxic Event, The", EVEN THOUGH THE ID TAG INFO IS ALL CORRECT!! I'd say 80% of the artists I added to my phone last night (about 50 total) refuse to download any artist background image; the background is just gray. Also, even though I added album art for EACH album as I put them on the phone, some refuse to display album art. Others show it O.K. One track, that is playing fine tonight, the phone told me last night, "Windows Phone cannot play this file type (the file is in WMA format)!!!!
This is a COMPLETE DISASTER, and I'm probably taking my Lumia 920 back to AT&T this weekend for a refund.
Oh, yeah, my previous phone, which I still have, is a Samsung Galaxy S III Android phone, and NONE of the music playing software on that phone had any problem playing the EXACT SAME music files I tranferred to my WP8 handset, and My Samsung Focus & Focus S WP7.5 hansets also had NO problem with these same music files!
Rename the Zune software and bring it back so we can use it with WP8 handsets, PLEASE!!!
What an EPIC fail!!!
Dennis
The windows phone application for windows works the first time it syncs, then it hangs on every subsequent sync unless I remove all the music from the device and start over. It hangs while trying to delete music. Awful.
loudog3114 said:
The windows phone application for windows works the first time it syncs, then it hangs on every subsequent sync unless I remove all the music from the device and start over. It hangs while trying to delete music. Awful.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Use Windows Media Player. It has been working flawless for me, and until MS beef up there current solution for WP8 users, I will not be using it.
morpheus1982 said:
Use Windows Media Player. It has been working flawless for me, and until MS beef up there current solution for WP8 users, I will not be using it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Windows Media Player may work fine for getting music on the phone (drag-and-drop works just as well, too), but it's what the Xbox music service does to the songs AFTER they're on the phone that causes the bigger problems, at least for me. It removes metadata (tag info) and replaces it with what it thinks is correct, causing some of my albums/CD's to be split into two separate albums/CD's. For example, I put (4) tracks from Beyonce's "B'day [Deluxe Edition] [Disc 1]" on my phone. Xbox music service split (2) of those tracks into a separate CD titled "B'day [Deluxe Edition] Disc 1", that shows NO album art! It did the same to "Yourself or Someone Like You", by Mathchbox Twenty - it split (1) track off into a separate "Yourself or Someone Like You" CD by Matchbox 20 (it changed the artist from Matchbox Twenty to Matchbox 20 for just this one track)! I have a CD by Ned's Atomic Dustbin for the single of "Not Sleeping Around"; I verify that, after I copy it over to the phone, it is displaying album art - within 15 minutes, the album art disappears! I've tried setting the music files to "read-only" before copying, but that somehow gets changed when being copied over to the phone, and the "read-only" option, when viewing the file properties on the phone, is grayed out.
I also frequently get an error message when trying to play songs on the phone that says, "Sorry, we can't play this type of file on your phone", even though the file is either in .mp3 or .wma format & it STARTS PLAYING BY ITSELF!!
WTF?!! Why did Microsoft scew this up SO bad?!! WP7/7.5 handled all this flawlessly! I'm seriously considering returning my Nokia Lumia 920 to AT&T over this specific issue!
Dennis
morpheus1982 said:
Use Windows Media Player. It has been working flawless for me, and until MS beef up there current solution for WP8 users, I will not be using it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I can't get WMP11 recognize my 920 as a device to sync.
But the Windows Phone Software works fine on Windows 7.
I think i am going up to Windows 8 Pro right after i got my SSD. Because the SDK doesn't work on Windows 7 either.
BTW: yep, sync music on Windows 7 for the WP8 is a little bit troublesome. There are far more less convenient than the Zune Software.
I dont know how it works on Windows 8 yet.
I too am amazed at how bad the software for PC actually is, I have no need for cloud storage so that isn't an issue but album art has been replaced on most songs by Xbox music and the desktop client which I am sure is a Beta is next to useless, I am using Win7x64 so maybe an upgrade to win8 will help?
I managed to finally drag & drop my music to the device which did do the trick, And am kind of happy that option was available, I preferred the Zune client to be honest for stability and ease of use and hope they can soon sort things out so they are a bit more stable.,
I guess the lesson to be learnt here is not to rush out and buy on first release, Looking back on WP7 when you compare the first release to Mango that should have been warning enough, No doubt there are nerds somewhere in MS working their asses off to fix this :laugh: Yeah right.......
AndyFZ1S said:
album art has been replaced on most songs by Xbox music and the desktop client which I am sure is a Beta is next to useless
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This.
...and there's no way to edit the metadata manually like in the Zune software. Really pissing me off.

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