By stroke of genius Windows Phone moved all Xbox purchased music to the cloud. Here’s how to get it back
- By Stephen Pate – It’s an up and down life for the developers of Windows Phone. Yesterday Cortana read a Twitter message to me and took my dictated reply and sent the Tweet. Awesome.
Xbox Music error message when streaming purchased songs
About the same time I tried to play some music on the Windows Phone, music I purchased from Nokia or Microsoft.
The screen message told me my connection wasn’t good enough. Why does purchased music need to be streamed?
The problem was caused by Microsoft secret plan. If things don’t get better soon, my next phone will be an Apple iPhone again which never fails. We’re still using the first iPhone as an mp3 player when gardening. Like the old watch ad, it takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’.
It’s no wonder the Windows Phone is not gaining popularity when Microsoft abuses its customers. Year over year the Windows Phone is stuck around 3% of users while Android phones soar and the iPhone makes a comeback with iPhone 6.
Wow! Somehow the music on the phone had been removed by Microsoft and was only available for streaming. The make matters worse, the Phone had all the titles in my Windows 8.1 music library but would only play the songs purchased. I had to hunt through more than 4,000 songs to find the one’s I purchased which then would not play because the signal wasn’t good enough.
Microsoft moved the music to the cloud and people are really ticked off. On the Microsoft Community site people are complaining about losing their music and get the shrug from moderators. One user is threatening a class action lawsuit. Good luck with that. After struggling for a few hours I came up with a slow way to get the music back.
Identify the missing songs
Missing songs have the symbol before the song title
If there are more than a few songs missing, make a list of artists, albums and songs to check off.
Compare the list with your songs.
In the example, Xbox Music identified a missing song – Just Like A Woman – with a small symbol (left of the song title – red lined & shown larger below)
That means the song is in the cloud.
You should see the same symbol on album listings if the whole album is in the cloud.
Add the songs/albums to a Playlist
Under the “…” in the lower right, select “add to…” a Playlist.
I used “Recently Added” but take your pick as long as you use the same Playlist for all the songs.
Select the Playlist and download your songs
Playlist for downloads
- From “Collection“
- select “playlists” and
- “Recently Added” (or your choice)
Songs that can be downloaded have the symbol.
In the screen shot some songs have already been download. “Tell Me Momma” was downloaded twice. I made mistakes like that and had to delete them.
“We Close Our Eyes” is ready to download.
Touch the download symbol arrow inside a circle on the left of the song name.
This is harder to do than it looks. Touch the arrow wrong and the screen flips somewhere else. Go back and try again.
Once the song is downloaded the arrow disappears and your song is back on the phone.
It took me 2 hours to download 65 songs. I forgot “Another Self-Portrait” with 56 songs. I will have to go back again and get them plus some Taylor Swift songs that disappeared.
Prepare your favourite libation – wine, whiskey, beer, or lemonade – to sip while you carryout this silly and tedious job. It’s a good lesson not to buy music from Xbox again.
Missing Xbox Music Songs – Solution summary
1. Make a list of artists, albums and songs
2. Find songs or albums with cloud symbol
3. Under the “…” in the lower right, select “add to…” a Playlist
4. From “Collection”
select “playlists” and
“Recently Added” (or your choice)
6. Select the download symbol on the left of the song name
7. Check to confirm song downloaded
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