Music syncing/playback on WP8

[cerebus]

Alright, so I'm pretty happy with my Lumia 620. It's got great hardware (screen is excellent, build quality is very solid) and it's the perfect size to still work as a gym music player, which was one of my major priorities.

BUUUUTTT...


I'm struggling to get a decent music player option for syncing and playback. I listen to a lot of podcasts and the podcast feature on the music player is just horrible. It claims to subscribe then doesn't actually; there's no time view of when it was created, there's no older episodes view.. just nothing.

Then the basic music app is just so lacking in basic features compared to iOS's. The Windows Phone Application is basically a portal to whatever other syncing tool you want to use (don't ask me why they took away Zune support, I'm as baffled as anyone). But the iTunes option doesn't seem to even have all the audio that my iTunes app contains, and some of it I really want on.

So anyways, recommendations? It's a bit of a dealbreaker for me.

 

[nicbst]

I just moved from a WP device to a S4 and I couldn't be happier. Can't believe I stuck with that pos OS for as long as I did

 

[cerebus]

I just moved from a WP device to a S4 and I couldn't be happier. Can't believe I stuck with that pos OS for as long as I did

Thanks for the help.

 

[cerebus]

Alright well there's a few pieces of advice. One seems to be syncing over WM directly rather than iTunes via WP Application. Another is using the Audible app to manage my podcasts/audiobooks. That mightacouldawork. I'll try tonight.

 

[Pho3nix]

Alright well there's a few pieces of advice. One seems to be syncing over WM directly rather than iTunes via WP Application. Another is using the Audible app to manage my podcasts/audiobooks. That mightacouldawork. I'll try tonight.

iTunes sync works. The removal of Zune sync messed up the podcast sync feature. There is another podcast app you could use, will get the name when I get home.

 

[cerebus]

iTunes sync works. The removal of Zune sync messed up the podcast sync feature. There is another podcast app you could use, will get the name when I get home.

I'm getting up to scratch now using iTunes. Podcasts are pretty sorted. It keeps tripping over remember position though which is important for managing my audiobooks and ministry messages and that sort of thing.

Ah-ha! I re-cast them as podcasts in iTunes and it remembers position in the player. Awesome.

 

[roguemat]

You're talking about the built in podcast stuff, correct? http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/how-to/wp8/music/get-music-and-podcasts-from-the-store

I've had no problems with it.
Goto music +video hub, then press Podcasts. Then tap on a title of one of the podcasts you are subscribed to (not the picture). That shows a list of the ones you have in your collection (should be 3 or however many you have told it to keep synced). Below each item it shows the date of the podcast, and if you haven't finished it, it will show how far through you are.
At the bottom press the little arrows to load the list of podcasts that the server has.
Tapping on one of the names will show you the writeup of that podcast. If you don't have the item you can tap download at the bottom to manually download it.

Maybe I am misunderstanding, but I don't see what it is missing .

p.s. Remember that it will only sync new episodes while you are charging.

 

[cerebus]

You're talking about the built in podcast stuff, correct? http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/how-to/wp8/music/get-music-and-podcasts-from-the-store

I've had no problems with it.
Goto music +video hub, then press Podcasts. Then tap on a title of one of the podcasts you are subscribed to (not the picture). That shows a list of the ones you have in your collection (should be 3 or however many you have told it to keep synced). Below each item it shows the date of the podcast, and if you haven't finished it, it will show how far through you are.
At the bottom press the little arrows to load the list of podcasts that the server has.
Tapping on one of the names will show you the writeup of that podcast. If you don't have the item you can tap download at the bottom to manually download it.

Maybe I am misunderstanding, but I don't see what it is missing .

p.s. Remember that it will only sync new episodes while you are charging.

Well I pretty much figured out what I need to do with this; and it's just a matter of:
1) Bypassing anything MS related and just using iTunes to sync (purely because I know iTunes pretty well)
2) Making all my audio content that needs bookmarking into podcast format on iTunes (such as ministry messages, audiobooks etc).