XBox Music App Issues - Windows Phone 8.1

I installed the Developer Preview of Windows Phone 8.1 earlier today, and was frustrated to discover that the dedicated XBox Music app has seemingly not been updated at all since it was released as a Beta months ago. Of course since this app replaces the stock Music app, and since the WP8.1 Developer Preview cannot be rolled back to an older version of the OS, I advise anyone installing WP8.1 early to beware (if you care about your music collection). The new XBox Music app is considerably worse than even it's predecessor.

This has certainly been documented in other threads, for instance in AndySteck's Post "Xbox Music Preview" Comments Here thread, however I thought I'd post this discussion to confirm that the app remains in its current awful form even with the recent OS update.

Major Issues

We are back to XBM overriding all metadata - song names, artist names, album names, and album art are all being rewritten in my collection. The app is also splitting up and/or combining albums. There is no longer the "Connect to XBM" setting that can be toggled on and off. In the previous version, even with this setting enabled the app had at least become smart enough to not overwrite existing metadata (at least for me) - it would only add in missing metadata (for instance an album cover that had not been manually attached to the tags). So we are back to square one with this - the one major flaw that was fixed in XBM on WP8 is now completely broken again, a year and a half after this platform launched.

The second part of this issue is that even in cases where the app is not overriding metadata, it is often not recognizing it at all. So in addition to having XBM override some of my existing album art, I also have tons of blank album art now even though every song in my collection has album art permanently embedded in the file. It's also suffering from a lack of artist backgrounds.Update 8/28: Album art is now being populated in most cases. In many cases the app is still overriding my embedded album art, despite the notes claiming it will no longer do this. I am also still seeing many albums that are split into multiple instances, or combined where they shouldn't be.

This seems to have affected the sync utilities also (at least the Desktop Sync App, and yes mine is updated to the most current version). I just noticed that some songs in my collection are back to not syncing properly. I'm also seeing that playlists are being changed when they sync - for instance a specific song in a playlist might be replaced with a live version of that song. Looking back at the playlist on my local computer however, everything is correct. 

The only available setting is "Show Streaming Music In My Collection" - everything else syncs automatically. So for instance there's no way to separate out cloud playlists from ones you added manually to your device - even with the view set strictly to "SD Card", it is showing duplicates of all my playlists, as well as playlists in my cloud.

The app is extreeeeemely sluggish - way worse than the previous version. Average time for me to navigate is 3-5 seconds between taps. Even when jumping to a letter in your collection, you are immediately greeted with a blank list that needs to repopulate to show your collection again, taking several more seconds. **Update 6/10:**App seems to have picked up some amount of navigational speed, but still nowhere near as snappy as the WP8.0 version, which wasn't even itself all that fast compared to its predecessor. This update claims that "Artist backgrounds now load more smoothly", yet on my device (Lumia 1520) it still takes around 5 seconds between track changes for the artist background to load. Update 6/19: After today's update, the app is even slower to navigate than when it first launched. It's now taking a full 8 seconds to load when navigating between presses (i.e. tapping on an artist, tapping on an album, etc.).

The app is currently limited to only playing 100 songs at a time. Shuffling all the music in your collection from the home screen? It actually is just creating a random 100-song slice to listen to. Have a playlist that has 100+ songs in it? You can't listen to that playlist in its entirety anymore.

Other Frustrating Changes

The changes to the sizing of everything is really cumbersome. Text is so unnecessarily huge now that album names, artist names, and song names, get truncated very heavily, to the point where in some cases I can't even tell what I'm looking at because I am not seeing enough of the name. It's as if this were re-designed for an elderly person with poor vision. 

Also as I've complained previously, there is no longer any way to rate songs. I just added a new album to my collection a couple weeks ago - did I like that 7th song? Did I want to keep it? Delete it? Add it to a playlist? I can't remember - wish there was some way to remind myself at a glance if I liked a song or not...

The new Now Playing screen is less efficient space-wise because it must now display the giant XBOX MUSIC text banner across the top - as a result a lot of previously well-used screen real estate is lost. For instance, under Now Playing (specifically below the playing song's timer bar) the app now only displays the song title and the artist. Previously this space was reserved for the currently playing song title, and thenext two upcoming tracks. You must now click a separate icon (looks like a little list) to see the upcoming songs. This stinks for users who like to shuffle, as it is really helpful to be able to see at a glance what tracks are coming up without having to navigate. Updated 5/23: Now Playing layout has been revised. "Current Song by Artist" now sits atop album art. Album art has been increased in size. "Up Next: Next Song by Artist" now sits below album art/scroll bar. Overall this is an improvement, but still not as logically laid out compared to the 8.0 app. There is no hierarchy of scale in the text (everything is the same size, so it all reads the same), so your eye doesn't go to what's currently playing, especially since all the controls are now at the bottom (your eye logically goes to the bottom).

There is also no text to tell you what the name of the album is - you have to rely on the album art, which of course is not always accurate, or may even be blank in certain rare albums.

Clicking on the upcoming song moves the track forward. This is really confusing, since clicking on the currently playing song actually takes you to that song's album in your collection. I would thinking clicking the upcoming song would take me tothat track's album. There are already two ways to advance the song (the fast forward button and swiping down on album art), why waste possible functionality on a third redundant method for skipping to the next track? Update: This no longer seems to be the case. This functionality was removed.

Since the Now Playing screen is baked into the overall app layout, you no longer have the ability to navigate ahead or back a track by swiping the album art. This was useful when you were partway through a track and wanted to go directly to the previous track, rather than skipping back to the beginning of the current track. It was also just a quicker way to navigate. Updated 5/23: swipe capabilities have been added (swipe up/down on album art to advance forward/back).

There is no longer a list of recently played / new items. **Update:**This feature has been added.

When looking at lists of songs (whether in Song view, or looking at the content of a Playlist), the small text under the song title now only displays the artist name, rather than the artist and album. Have multiple versions of a song from different albums (say, from a studio vs live album)? Now you have no way of knowing which is which before playing. Strangely, once you play a set of songs, then you do get the artist and album - why on earth can't this be universal?

The LiveTile no longer displays any information when playing music - there is no scrolling text or artist imagery. Update: 8/28 - Live Tile now displays artist art and name of artist. Would like to see more info in future updates, i.e. ability to choose from a couple Live Tile options, including option to show current song, album, etc.

Adding music to Now Playing now adds it to the end of whatever list of music you're listening to, rather than queuing it up as the next upcoming track. So you now have to navigate all the way to the end of the Now Playing list to hear the new music you just queued up. This makes Add to: Now Playing pretty much useless when listening to more than a few tracks at a time.

When clicking on the icon to display all the upcoming music in Now Playing, the screen often does not automatically jump to the currently playing track - it instead starts at your currently playing track, and on subsequent views it stays on wherever in the list you last left off. So if you are well into whatever list of music you are listening to and you want to see what's coming up next, you have to hunt through the whole queue to find your currently playing song and see what's coming after it.

When scrolling through the list of currently playing songs, you can only scroll by touching the actual song title - if you touch the black area of the screen, the software will not register your touch. Oddly, once you have the list scrolling, you can touch the black area of the screen to continue scrolling - it works if the list is in motion, but not when it is static. This does not seem to happen in other areas of the app that require scrolling, just in the list of queued currently playing songs.