XBox Music Pass compatible MP3 players

I am just really angry. I LOVED my 80G Zune and all the things it did. I am furious that Microsoft got rid of the service as I have no other MP3 player and my phone is a HUGE brick that doesn't play your service well.

MY ZUNE WAS PERFECT. YOU MADE A PERFECT DEVICE AND AN AWESOME MUSIC SERVICE. Now it's all ****.

Now I basically have nothing to use to listen to music at work and when working out, my playlists that I spent 7 years accumulating are worthless and this is bull!!!!

All I see on here and other forums are complete anger from everyone who used your music service before you changed it to Groove. This was a totally bad idea.

WHY EXACTLY won't you continue to update the licensing on the Zune website?

And WHY can't you add that accessibility to the Groove Music thing so we can update our Zune licensing from there and continue to use our units???

I don't see why this is so freakin hard to fix. I am also NOT an engineer.

But come on! ALL OF YOUR CONSUMERS WANT IT.

WHY WONT YOU DO IT?

I'd like to see an updated Band that could play music.  I was hoping that the Band 2 would add the ability to load Groove music on it, but no luck.  I completely agree about the need for something small that can be used as a decent running companion.  I am looking at the TomTom band now that includes music - I think the ability to store 500 songs.  Microsoft is missing the opportunity to really drive some unique value for Groove and the Band...

I gave up ... XBox Music was kludge, Grove was nothing more than XBox Music with a new name. The user interface was a drag-over w/o true mobile functionality. So, I signed up for Spotify and while it doesn't work with MP3 players as far as I can tell, it's a great music app. I've come to terms with using a phone for music and now I've got a great source for driving Bluetooth car speakers, home speakers, outdoor speakers, etc. I checked Groove a couple of weeks ago and it's still no match for Spotify. I like everything MS is doing these days, and eventually Groove may be good. But right now, it's not worth fiddling with.

Funny you say that. I just started with Spotify yesterday. There's only a handful of songs that I listen(ed) to that I can't play like some older Hawthorn Heights stuff...but I can load it on the MOTOACTV I mentioned before, there's a decent client for Windows and there's a similar experience on Android (and with Chromecast). I haven't gone with the paid version yet, but this might be my solution...

I gave up ... XBox Music was kludge, Grove was nothing more than XBox Music with a new name. The user interface was a drag-over w/o true mobile functionality. So, I signed up for Spotify and while it doesn't work with MP3 players as far as I can tell, it's a great music app. I've come to terms with using a phone for music and now I've got a great source for driving Bluetooth car speakers, home speakers, outdoor speakers, etc. I checked Groove a couple of weeks ago and it's still no match for Spotify. I like everything MS is doing these days, and eventually Groove may be good. But right now, it's not worth fiddling with.

It is true that the Nano and Shuffle are not compatible with the Apple Music service - so I thankfully haven't had to cut over to iTunes (in spite of my wife's pressure to do so).  So, I'm already resigned to my fate of running with a full sized phone.  I did find a running belt that makes this fairly painless - as long as the music is set up to play continuously.  The phone is not really accessible in the belt.

So given that context, I am having problems with Xbox Music on my Windows Phone (HTC M8).  I set up a playlist on the Groove Desktop App - and this playlist does show up in my Windows Phone as advertised.  When I attempt to play the playlist, I find there are songs on my playlist that report a license error which stops all music - it apparently doesn't even attempt to skip over these songs.

I've confirmed that the playlist plays fine on the desktop app... but will hit certain songs in the same playlist on the Windows Phone and will literally stop the music.  It's lotsa fun to haul out my HTC M8 brick in the middle of my run to investigate the dearth of sound.  (That's sarcasm.  It's not fun at all.) 

I'm not interested in acquiring a different Windows Phone (I already have a smaller 640 for my kid so that wouldn't even cost my anything) if the app itself doesn't really work.  I have explored other Music options and have confirmed that Spotify allows me to build the desired playlist on my desktop and play this list on my phone without disruption during my runs.  Once my free trial of Spotify expires, I do plan to subscribe and walk away from the 3 free months of Groove provided by Microsoft for my years of loyalty to Xbox Music.  Free isn't worth the current pain.