[Windows Phone 8 General] loudog3114:
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.