5 Things Xbox Music Should Improve To Become A Winning Music Service
Table of contents:
- Work well
- More emphasis on social and music recommendations
- Integration with FM radio
- More music organization options
- Metadata and Playlists
- Prices for different pockets and needs
- Bonus: Be available in more countries
It is no mystery to anyone that, despite the fact that Xbox Music offers a couple of interesting functions, such as synchronization with the cloud or the integration between Windows devices, it falls behind in many aspects when compared to other alternatives on the market, such as Spotify, Rdio, iTunes or the same Zune servicethat preceded it and that Microsoft offered until a few years ago.
But where exactly does Xbox Music go wrong? What is missing to be an attractive option and reach or surpass its rivals? In this article we propose a series of elements that, being improved by Microsoft , could take Xbox Music to a better position in the sector where it competes, creating an experience that delights those of us who use its different platforms.
Work well
The first change might seem too obvious to mention, but with the number of bugs and issues we've seen in Xbox Music for Windows Phone 8.1, it's not. Microsoft must redouble its efforts to improve the Xbox Music client into an application that measures up, both in terms of performance and usability
It is not admissible that, since Windows Phone 8.1 is already being distributed, the official music application for this operating system works as poorly as it does now, and lacks basic features such as support for live tiles or multi-disc albums. And although in Windows 8 the panorama is not so bad, there are also problems to be solved in terms of stability.
In the age of torrents and YouTube, the great justification to convince someone to pay for a music service is user experience This includes having a large catalog (something Xbox Music already delivers on), but also offering an interface and features that are pleasant to use, making listening to and downloading music a pleasurable experience
Zune and its subscription service stood out for that, and that led many users to pay for it, even if it was more expensive. The only thing we're asking Microsoft here is to catch up with what they've already achieved in the past: create a music app you'd love to use
More emphasis on social and music recommendations
With the above resolved, Xbox Music still needs to catch up on another essential aspect: being able to help users discover new music according to their tastesAfter all, if someone pays for a music subscription, it's usually not because they want to listen to their collection over and over again, but because they want to explore new things, discover new songs in their favorite genres, find new hidden gems every day, mixes of songs for different times of the day, moods, or interests.
Services like Spotify and 8tracks accomplish this very well by incorporating playlists created by humans, both by users and by people who They work developing the service. On the Zune, that was also present with Channels, themed playlists created by the Zune team and regularly updated to feature new songs. And both in Zune and in other services there was a recommendation system, which analyzed the songs we listened to, and suggested music that was similar to it. "
In Xbox Music there is no recommendation system, and although we can find hand-made playlists in the store, browsing them is almost impossible since there is no section dedicated to them, and in general they are lists that have not been updated since the Zune days.There&39;s also no room to share our own playlists and favorite songs with other Xbox Music users. We only have the Radio function, which is insufficient, since it creates automatic playlists of songs only from 1 element that we select (album or song), and it does not have enough intelligence to create a list that reflects a mood, or that is appropriate for a time of day (for example, to study, go for a run, work, sleep, etc)."
This brings us to another flaw of Xbox Music, which is its deficit in the social section For those of us who used Zune the contrast is obvious , since the previous Microsoft service sought to stand out precisely in this area (its motto was "> is not about making new friends from music, but about discovering new music from what my friends listen to.
I don't think it's necessary for Microsoft to go as far and create a social network around Xbox Music as Zune Social or iTunes Ping did, just mimic the Spotify experience and offer Good integration with an already established music social network, such as Last.fm With this, Redmond would also make up for the lack of recommendations, since Last.fm already has a pretty good recommendation engine, based on user scrobblings.
It's important to note here that social generally doesn't add value in and of itself, but rather it's valuable because it helps you discover new music and get better recommendationsIt's not about making new friends through music, it's about discovering new music through what my friends listen to. By not incorporating social features, the experience that Xbox Music offers lags behind its rivals, because users can't take full advantage of the unlimited music subscription to discover new songs.
Integration with FM radio
Most Windows Phone computers also have FM radio with RDS, although this is now an optional feature for manufacturers, so only a software update would be enough to re-implement something like the Buy from FM>"
To some this may seem like an irrelevant function, but it must be considered that to this day, radio is one of the main means by which people discover new music. If we pay almost 10 dollars a month for a music subscription, so much the better that it makes it easy for us to download the songs we listen to on the dial.
More music organization options
In this section Xbox Music sits squarely in the stone age The organization options of the Zune Software were not to launch rockets, but at least they met the basics. We had smart playlists, the ability to like or dislike a song, and proper metadata management.All of that was lost with the move to Xbox Music.
"If the classification system with hearts that existed in Zune was already questionable, here we don&39;t even have that. You can&39;t sort songs according to whether you like them or not, you can&39;t create smart playlists, and you can&39;t even sort songs according to attributes such as the number of times they have been played. We cannot do things as basic as creating a list with our 25 most listened to songs, or a list with the forgotten songs that we have not heard in a while, etc. It&39;s not even possible to edit in detail the bad metadata of any song, or add cover art, unless it&39;s matching an Xbox Music song (and if the Xbox Music metadata is wrong, nothing to do)."
Metadata and Playlists
Xbox Music lags behind in these two areas, offering insufficient features compared to iTunes and even the same Zune Software that preceded it a few years ago.
"On top of that, song and playlist management is even poorer on Windows Phone, where it&39;s not even possible to edit manual playlists , and you can&39;t edit the Now Playing list either. In addition, synchronization of playlists between Xbox Music and phones is imperfect: only songs are synchronized that, in addition to being in the playlists to be synchronized, are added in our collection. It is not possible to synchronize a song by adding it to a playlist, but without also adding it to our music collection, as it was possible in Zune. This is bad because sometimes we want to have playlists just to discover new music, but keeping those songs separate from our old songs ."
All these problems, added to the fact that the Windows Phone desktop client has support for iTunes, mean that, paradoxically, Apple's player is today a better option for synchronizing music with a Windows Phone ( if we are interested in having a management based on playlists).For example, with iTunes you can choose to sync all songs that have 4 or 5 stars and have been listened to more than 2 times. And in the case of podcasts, using iTunes for synchronization becomes almost mandatory, since Windows Media Player (the other application that integrates with the Windows Phone client) does not support this type of content.
I would like Xbox Music in this section to be at the level of iTunes, which stands out for its tremendously complete organization options. But personally I'm satisfied that they return us the functionalities that the last version of Zune had (4.5), which were more than enough to make a decent management of collections of great music.
Prices for different pockets and needs
While services like Rdio offer several plans with different features, depending on what each one is willing to pay, at Xbox Music the options are simply two: either we pay $9.99 a month to have unlimited music by streaming and offline, or we stay with the free service, which has 10 hours of streaming per month with . There is no cheaper plan for those who want to listen to unlimited music without , but are not interested in the option of downloading the songs, as Rdio and other services offer.
You also miss a more expensive plan, which includes> credits, so you can keep them forever, even after the subscription ends. Back in the day, the Zune Pass offered us something like this: pay $14.99 a month for unlimited streaming and downloads (what Xbox Music offers today), plus 10 credits to download DRM-free MP3 songs.As an offer it made a lot of sense: the subscription allowed us to listen to everything and discover new music, while we used the credits to keep forever the 10 songs we liked the most each month, so when we decided to stop paying for the service, we were left with a larger music collection than we started with."
"It wouldn&39;t be wrong to offer family plans>if a discount was given for contracting several subscriptions at the same time. This would incentivize the popularization of the service through word of mouth, while giving users the opportunity to save some money."
Bonus: Be available in more countries
There are currently many markets where Xbox Music is not officially available. In several Latin American countries, for example, you cannot use the free music service, and we can only start listening to music by resorting to a trick to change the location geographic in Windows and contracting a subscription.And even if we achieve this, the experience obtained by those of us who use Xbox Music in these countries is more limited, since the store shows us the hits and new releases from other latitudes, and not from our locality.
If Microsoft wants to gain brand value and be recognized by consumers as a company that offers good experiences, it should not neglect these emerging markets , but should look to expand the Xbox Music service globally, as Apple has already done with iTunes.
Clearly these do not have to be the only things that Xbox Music could improve on, but in my opinion I think they are the most relevant, or the ones that would give it the greatest differentiation in the online music market.
