DRM - how u like me now? - Windows Phone 7 General

hmmmmm
source:
http://m.wpcentral.com/microsoft-notifies-zune-pass-users-impending-changes-loss-features
We just received our email notification from Microsoft about the soon-to-happen changeover from Zune Pass/Zune Music to Xbox Music. While most of the features seem to remain, including being locked in your $10 or $15 a month subscriptions (the latter for old school users), there are some significant changes that we’re not exactly too excited about.
The changes are due to rollout August 31 st , leaving little time to adjust to those new adjustments. The features that we will be losing in a few days are the following...
Sending and receiving messages, inviting friends, sharing the songs, playlists, and albums you are listening to, and viewing past play history Mixview playback and channel playlists Apps for Zune HD Purchasing music videos or streaming them as a part of Zune Music Pass from the Zune PC software Re-downloading, re-activating, or re-licensing previously purchased music videos if / when you upgrade your PC
That means under-baked features like Zune Social, something we always wanted for Windows Phone, will be going away in addition to those Zune HD apps, which are finally being given the axe.
It is also surprising to see that video purchases or streaming via Zune software will no longer being supported, as presumably Microsoft transitions to a yet undefined Xbox Video service this fall for Windows 8.
The big kicker is the in ability to re-activate or re-license previously purchased music videos, putting users like ourselves in a bit of a rush to make sure all our music videos are unlocked and DRM free between all our PCs.
What bothers us the most, we suppose, is all of these changes are removing features while we are getting nothing in return. Will that change once Xbox Music goes live? We sure hope so.

Related

TP2 Music app doesn`t play in track order!

Just been syncing some music to my TP2 and, rather annoyingly, the HTC music player will not play in track number order!!
If I use windows media player, the tracks play in their correct order.
Anyone else seen this - or got a solution??
Are you using .m4a (AAC) files from iTunes? If so, my Touch Pro (raphael) does exactly the same thing. I find it so annoying too. Real shame to hear that HTC still can't even get this one simple thing right. Search the forums, there are various posts about it here and there, though as yet I don't think anyone has worked out a way around the problem - do have a look for yourself though as I gave up searching a few months ago ; )
If you use MP3 files, they will appear in track order...
Come on HTC - this is terrible!
My source music is wma lossless, and the sync process transcodes it into 192K WMA files on the phone.
Can`t believe this is a long standing bug!! V poor!!
just disavble any crappy "transcoding" in activesync - you don't need it.
AlCapone said:
just disavble any crappy "transcoding" in activesync - you don't need it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I cant do that - my source files are *lossless* - that means file sizes of around 40mb per track!!!!
scoob101 said:
Just been syncing some music to my TP2 and, rather annoyingly, the HTC music player will not play in track number order!!
If I use windows media player, the tracks play in their correct order.
Anyone else seen this - or got a solution??
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have the same problem. I'm use the same songs from my fuze and the fuze loaded them right
anyone found a fix for this yet?
My source files are also lossless wma and the sync transcodes them to 128kb/s wma and I have spent the last 2 weeks trying to convince some HTC tech support guy that this is actually happening. I'm about ready to pull my hair out, this guy will not admit even the possibility of this happening. He keeps coming up with yet another thing to try or another reason that it is my fault.
I'm OK with the occasional bug in SW. Just as long as the company acknowledges it and works to fix it but when they go to this much trouble to avoid even acknowledging it ...
S
i had been looking for a fix to this issue for a very long time, until i found out that the problem is caused (in my case) by
1) windows media player not saving the track numbers correctly into the files
2) touch flow only looking in the "right" place for the track information, which is not the place where wm player stores it
my solution:
1) download mp3tag (freeware app)
2) put all tracks of album you want to fix into the program
3) select all tracks and re-save the tag information (you don't have to change anything, the program just saves the information that is in the audio file "somewhere" into the right place)
4) place the fixed files on your phone again
easy fix....use coreplayer
I never liked the way WMP or the native media player handled files, etc. Coreplayer has been such a better experience!

zune player background and smart dj function not working on mango

i just updated my wp7 phone to the official version of mango! only problem is zune player now refuses to download any artist wallpaper for the now playing screen and won't launch the smart dj function. the now playing screen just shows the album art and a black background. i know its not the music either since i've got the same songs on here that i had on nodo and it was working then.
any ideas on how to get the background artist wallpaper and the smart dj function working again? i've tried powering it off and powering it back on, system resetting, nothing is working.
running mango on dell venue pro, transferring music via windows phone 7 connector for mac
goto settings, applications then select music+videos and make sure all those options are checked then goto settings>system>lock+wallpaper and set show artist when playing music. that should work
I guess he lives in an area where Zune Pass is not available, so none of this will work. Have the same problem since Mango...
yea all of the boxes are checked under settings and i live in the US so i know it should work. it worked before under nodo.
is it because im syncing via windows phone 7 connector for mac and not the official pc zune client? pretty sure i used that for nodo too and it worked...
Same prob. Now i was getting art and smart dj for my AC DC songs, but none for anything else.
HELPP?
You guys need to have your Zune PLayer 'Metadata' ON for it...
(On the PC that is...)
Same issue here, it was fine until 3-4 weeks ago and now I get nothing (and yes the settings are correct on the PC and the phone).
On my Zune HD it's all fine but then again it has always been better than on the phone.
Same problem for me. I've only just got a HTC Titan, running the latest version of Mango and neither the Artist Art or Smart DJ Mix are working. I'm in the UK, and i've even started the 14 day free trial of Zune pass in an effort to see if that would work (it didn't). I've also tried removing all content from the phone and syncing again. I'm doing this with my Mac using Windows Phone 7 Connector and iTunes. I've also tried it with a spare HTC HD7S and have the same problems.
This is reallly bugging me!
[SOLVED]
I have the same problem, no background "artist art" is displayed, neither smart DJ works. Some facts:
- I live in he UK, so Zune marketplace is available.
- The background appears if I play the 30 sec samples in Zune marketplace (always)
- I managed to have the background appearing only on one album of those I have saved in mp3 (Xylo Myloto of Coldplay). No idea why/how just this one.
- The same behaviour happens in Zune for PC: the artist background only appears when I play the samples in the marketplace, or that Coldplay album. For all the others, I have the generic background.
- My mp3 are properly tagged, the information was taken using the "find album info" function in Zune, and I chacked visually for some tracks that album, artist, album artist, title match. But no luck.
Any other insight into this? It's very frustrating!
maTTeo
*** Update ***
Using Zune Social Tagger (https://github.com/leetreveil/Zune-Social-Tagger/downloads) worked for me. It seems to me that the tag information that you can retrieve through Zune ("Find album info") does not match with the albums on the Zune marketplace. Zune Social Tagger fixes these tags, and maybe does something else, I don't know. Anyway, it solved!
Not solved
That's not the issue, I've been using Zune Social Tagger for a year, all my songs are tagged. Like I said it used to work fine until 3-4 weeks ago and stopped working suddenly for no apparent reason.
In addition I have a Zune HD to compare and everything is fine on it so I'm positive the songs are properly tagged, it's an issue with the phone OS.
Peew971 said:
That's not the issue, I've been using Zune Social Tagger for a year, all my songs are tagged. Like I said it used to work fine until 3-4 weeks ago and stopped working suddenly for no apparent reason.
In addition I have a Zune HD to compare and everything is fine on it so I'm positive the songs are properly tagged, it's an issue with the phone OS.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I hope this is the case so there may be hope with an update.
I've now tried copying some albums (various albums from Alicia Keys, Coldplay and Common) over to my work laptop running windows 7. Installed Zune Software and I tried a combination of finding album info on some albums and leaving some alone. I then synced with my HTC HD7S and still no cigar. Strangely, if i select Common from the artist list on the phone, it'll show the artist background while still on the albums list but then once I select a song to play, there's no artist art.
I'm inclined to agree that this is a bug.
I have the exact same problem on my Dell Venue Pro on Mango, my thinking is that it could be something to do with me having used a US Zune account in the past for my Zune HD and in doing so has messed up all the metadata on all of my music. I've tried all the suggestions in this thread and nothing has worked, so I guess I'm just going to have to wait for someone to stumble upon a clever fix or an update.
SirDigby said:
I have the exact same problem on my Dell Venue Pro on Mango, my thinking is that it could be something to do with me having used a US Zune account in the past for my Zune HD and in doing so has messed up all the metadata on all of my music. I've tried all the suggestions in this thread and nothing has worked, so I guess I'm just going to have to wait for someone to stumble upon a clever fix or an update.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't think that's the issue, as I've not used a US Zune account and it doesn't work for me either. I've tried using the live chat on MS support site, they were useless!
If your phone is interopunlocked you can try this tool I made to add backgrounds from last.fm to your artists:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1377210&page=4

Spotify now on Windows Phone 7

Spotify is now on Windows Phone!! Yayy!! Am glad that windows phone is still in the loop. It will only get better
Has anyone downloaded the app yet! I cannot post what am listening to on facebook.
Anybody?
Nevermind, I figured it out, lol
I think Spotify is great, especially because of the fact that it does not crash my phone every other song, like Zune does. I have already purchased a Spotify premium pass and if Microsoft and HTC don't fix the huge bug crashing zune on my Mozart, I'll have to get rid of my Zune pass altogether!
Spotify is the simplest media streaming solution I seen.
josepmanel said:
I think Spotify is great, especially because of the fact that it does not crash my phone every other song, like Zune does. I have already purchased a Spotify premium pass and if Microsoft and HTC don't fix the huge bug crashing zune on my Mozart, I'll have to get rid of my Zune pass altogether!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I was thinking about purchasing a premium too, lol
Lovin spotify on my Focus! a very good made App very smooth and very beautiful
I am getting worried now because all i have seen is positive words about the Spotify WP7 app but all i have is constant aggro with it. It seems to forget what playlists i have saved as offline randomly and if i launch the app with a slow (GPRS, 2G etc) connection then instead of just letting me into my offline playlists it craps out and again forgets which ones are offline or not!
I was kinda hoping others were suffering from bugs and problems with the app so i don't have to factory reset my phone and they can just issue an update.
Anyone?
I was excited about the Spotify application, but I think that it's far to unstable today. in one hour I experienced three crashes, one of them also resulted in the app deleting my offline playlist It also seems to drain at least twice the amount of power compared to Zune while I'm listening to music.
However it is interesting to note that Spotify is the first (non-OEM) app I've seen that are using Interop services and native binaries for their app..
I was super excited until I learned that Spotify requires a FB account. WTF???? I do not have FB and I do not want one.
Sir. Haxalot said:
However it is interesting to note that Spotify is the first (non-OEM) app I've seen that are using Interop services and native binaries for their app..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Apparently Tango does as well
I have to say, these friggin cloud-based ideas are a joke. Seriously. They are just too complicated. Spotify, for all of its quality, just is the exact opposite of intuitive. And Skydrive, for trying to play music files, is nothing short of an unfunny joke. The files aren't anywhere. But they are on SkyDrive. But they aren't there.
And Spotify...I try to play music files on my phone and it says they aren't available in offline mode. Okay...how the friggin hell can I get it to go into online mode? There is nothing that indicates what the hell to do.
Does MS and these other cloud-based type app devs ...are they so disconnected from humanity that they cannot imagine there are a lot of users completely unfamiliar with all this crap? Do they honestly say to themselves that they will make cloud-based architecture work when no-friggin-body knows how to friggin use it?? [/rant over]
This is why some of prefer to not be dependent on the cloud. Joke indeed.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using Tapatalk
SkyDrive doesn't really count because its not really meant for music at the moment. Zune Pass, Microsoft's cloud offering, works pretty well though.
As far as Spotify is concerned, I searched for an artist, clicked an album, clicked a song and it started streaming. Was really straightforward, what did you do differently?
MS needs to reevaluate their software seriously. Even the included Office app is a joke. I read something about music files being listed in Office documents and I tried to load Office 365 but it said I needed to set it up. Okay...I try to set it up by signing into my Live.com account and it says that account already exists. WTH! Okay...I see a descriptive little bit under the Outlook selection relating to Office 365. I tap it and it asks for an email and password. Okay...hmmm...I suppose it would be my Live.com UID and password. I type that in and it can't find it..
Why include crap on a WP7 phone that takes a scientist mind to understand??
Office 365 is a paid service. If you want to use office stuff in the cloud you use SkyDrive.
I don't think Microsoft needs to reevaluate it. There is no native SkyDrive music player, there are apps in the works to handle it and maybe Microsoft will build it in at some point. Office isn't intended to play music so it's no surprise that it sucks at it
PG2G said:
Office 365 is a paid service. If you want to use office stuff in the cloud you use SkyDrive.
I don't think Microsoft needs to reevaluate it. There is no native SkyDrive music player, there are apps in the works to handle it and maybe Microsoft will build it in at some point. Office isn't intended to play music so it's no surprise that it sucks at it
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, that told me volumes about all the details, nooks and crannies of Office. It told me the origin of Office 365. It told me exactly and precisely what I need to do to set up Office, what Office is, what it's about...in the minutest detail.
You see, when I say MS needs to reevaluate their software, I mean they need to learn how to explain it so a common WP7 user can understand it and how to use it...without reading the library of Congress.
MartyLK said:
Yeah, that told me volumes about all the details, nooks and crannies of Office. It told me the origin of Office 365. It told me exactly and precisely what I need to do to set up Office, what Office is, what it's about...in the minutest detail.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you want to know what Office 365 is, then look it up.
The average Windows Phone user will be using SkyDrive to store documents, not Office 365 (subscription based) or SharePoint (corporate). Not sure why you're attempting to make this difficult.
MartyLK said:
You see, when I say MS needs to reevaluate their software, I mean they need to learn how to explain it so a common WP7 user can understand it and how to use it...without reading the library of Congress.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Come on man. It doesn't take more than 30 seconds to find out that Office 365 is a subscription service. That's like saying Microsoft needs to explain what Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts are.
PG2G said:
If you want to know what Office 365 is, then look it up.
The average Windows Phone user will be using SkyDrive to store documents, not Office 365 (subscription based) or SharePoint (corporate). Not sure why you're attempting to make this difficult.
Come on man. It doesn't take more than 30 seconds to find out that Office 365 is a subscription service. That's like saying Microsoft needs to explain what Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts are.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You are kidding, right?? Are you serious? Do you not see, even you, another WP7 user who happens to be familiar with this stuff, how disconnected you are from those who aren't familiar with it??
Believe it or not, I still don't fully understand FB or Twitter. It took me a very long time to even know what the hell those things were and what their idea is.
You create an Office document, click Save, it asks you if you want to save it to Phone or SkyDrive (which is the default).
You create a Note, it saves automatically to SkyDrive.
You don't even need to know what you're doing for this to work.
PG2G said:
You create an Office document, click Save, it asks you if you want to save it to Phone or SkyDrive (which is the default).
You create a Note, it saves automatically to SkyDrive.
You don't even need to know what you're doing for this to work.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
To you it is as simple as blinking your eyes. But that's because you are familiar with it. Maybe you were born into it, I don't know. All I know is the common user doesn't know this stuff and the common user is who MS is targeting with WP7. And it's a bit more complicated than what you describe. I had to actually Google how to access the SkyDrive on my phone. And then when I go to the Office app, I don't see anything of my SkyDrive documents or other files.
It's more complicated getting started and going than what you can believe.

[Q] Porting data from AT&T iPhone 4 to Verizon GN?

So, thanks to a combination of dissatisfaction with AT&T and a desire to escape Apple's deathgrip, I've switched to Verizon and bought myself a shiny new Galaxy Nexus. Amazon has informed me that the phone will be in my grubby little paws by tomorrow evening, which is awesome; but now I have to port over everything that I've stored via Apple's methods for the last 4 years, which is less awesome.
So what's the best way to do this? I will be rooting the GN almost literally right out of the box, and while I haven't had a Android phone before, I have a Nook Color that I've used to run (via uSD) Nookie Froyo, CM7, and a pre-alpha of ICS/CM9, all of which I've synced with added GApps at least once. My primary Google account (I have two) has almost no contacts, so if at all possible, I'd prefer to overwrite that entirely with my Apple/iPhone contacts. And although I know it's highly unlikely, if there's a way to copy over SMS/MMS history I would be in heaven. I'd also like to copy as much of my music, pics, and videos (~25GB total) out of iTunes and iPhoto as I can, although if there's a way to sync Android with either, that'd be swell.
FWIW, I have both a Mac and a Win7 box, so I can use either or both for any of these processes.
zombieflanders said:
So, thanks to a combination of dissatisfaction with AT&T and a desire to escape Apple's deathgrip, I've switched to Verizon and bought myself a shiny new Galaxy Nexus. Amazon has informed me that the phone will be in my grubby little paws by tomorrow evening, which is awesome; but now I have to port over everything that I've stored via Apple's methods for the last 4 years, which is less awesome.
So what's the best way to do this? I will be rooting the GN almost literally right out of the box, and while I haven't had a Android phone before, I have a Nook Color that I've used to run (via uSD) Nookie Froyo, CM7, and a pre-alpha of ICS/CM9, all of which I've synced with added GApps at least once. My primary Google account (I have two) has almost no contacts, so if at all possible, I'd prefer to overwrite that entirely with my Apple/iPhone contacts. And although I know it's highly unlikely, if there's a way to copy over SMS/MMS history I would be in heaven. I'd also like to copy as much of my music, pics, and videos (~25GB total) out of iTunes and iPhoto as I can, although if there's a way to sync Android with either, that'd be swell.
FWIW, I have both a Mac and a Win7 box, so I can use either or both for any of these processes.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In iTunes you can specify a Google account to sync with. See here. You'll have to pull your other data off and sync it with the phone through MTP using your Windows 7 machine or the Android File Transfer utility on the Mac.
You might want to take a look at using Picasa Web and Google Music for your music and pictures. Works for myself.
Just follow these instructions to setup google contact sync on the iPhone:
http://support.google.com/mobile/bin/answer.py?hl=en&topic=14252&answer=138740
When you activate your Nexus and put in your gmail information, you will automagically have your contacts.
Okay, synced and merged the Google contacts in 5 minutes flat. Thanks for the help, I think I'm looking good there. I am worried about things being overwritten by Facebook integration (which almost happened to my mom when she went from an iPhone 3G to a Bionic), but is that not a concern with the GN/ICS? And if I copied over all the contact info from my primary Google account to my secondary account, would it avoid dupes?
As for the music, I've been a member of Google Music since the beta, but the last time it synced with iTunes things got a little messed up (i.e., incorrect tags/ID3, missing artwork, etc). Could I blow my GM library away and start anew without running into storage or bandwidth issues? And could I set it up so that every time it syncs with iTunes it downloads a copy to the phone, or at least notifies me?
Thanks for the help, sorry if it's too many questions.
ETA: And here's another. Does this method/app(s) for SMS/MMS backup seem legit? I would love it if this worked too, since that would take care of the last of my major concerns.

LineageOS Stripped Down Kids Mode?

I've got two kids, ages 6 and 8, and we keep their screen time limited, but they love audiobooks and for the past few years we have bought them cheap mp3 players and loaded audiobooks on them from the library using the Overdrive app on a pc which then syncs the mp3s to the mp3 player. However, Overdrive has been discontinued and is likely to be fully killed off sometime in 2023 (no doubt thanks to pressure from the publishing industry) whereupon the only way to get audiobooks from the library will be through the Libby app, but this of course requires an internet connected device. For obvious reasons I don't want to just give my kids an Android phone with access to Youtube, social media, etc. I have played around with LineageOS to breath fresh life into an old Kindle tablet and various older phones, so I'm thinking perhaps picking up some cheap old Moto phones and loading them up with LineageOS would be an option, but I'd want to strip out some of the functionality and remove the web browser, phone and sms, and basically just have a camera, Libby app, k9 email client, and if possible voice recognition. presumably Libby and k9 mail could be sideloaded. Not sure about voice recognition, but it seems like maybe Gapps pico or microG might offer a way to implement google voice recognition? But is it possible to have voice recognition without having the play store? As far as removing the browser, it appears that LOSdiet should work for that purpose.
Anyone embarked on a similar task?
mgrharry said:
(...)
Anyone embarked on a similar task?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Why can't you use a guest account?
While I suppose using the Guest feature on a stock Android device might be an option, I'd prefer not to go down that route for a few reasons. First, it seems like it's mostly designed as a temporary option for loaning a phone to a friend, not as a permanent function, and I am afraid it would be easy to accidentally delete all the contents of the guest account which would result in a very unhappy kid. Second, if they know it can do all the things a "real" phone can do and they're just locked out of doing them, that will make them much more prone to nagging us to install random junky games and apps and fiddling around trying to access the main account. I'd prefer if it just wasn't an option at all.
Maybe try it out before you reject it.
Google Family Link
Yes, I have also the combination of google family link and LOS and IF it is working, it is working really great!
On some systems, you need to have two user profiles on the device, as the children account alone would lead to an FRP lock , at least on S4 and S5 neo.
I got it one time working by adding first the parents account and then afterwards adding the children account. In Settings, enable multi user and then add a PIN (or whatever) to prevent access to your account from the one your child is using.

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