Nokia Music PC application launched (early beta) - what do you think?
Guest writer: Mark Wheatley, Product Manager, Nokia Music for PC
Welcome to Nokia Music!
Thanks checking out this Beta version of our new Nokia Music PC application.
While there is other music management software out there, we’ve made this application more focused on the needs of mobile users. That is why our first release concentrates on those features that will give real value to people who enjoy their music on the move.
We talked to many users during the product development phase and they told us they want to update the music on their mobile device more frequently than they do at the moment. Many of them find the process time consuming and difficult. We created Nokia Music with that in the forefront of our minds and made it possible to rip CDs directly to a connected device (just drag and drop the CD icon to your device – job done!) and move playlists you have created while out and about back to your PC collection.
The techies among us will be interested to know that Nokia Music is one of the first applications to take use Microsoft’s new WPF technology which in the future will allow us to introduce some cool and innovative enhancements in the coming months.
It was also important to us when creating Nokia Music to take a standards based approach. What does that mean? Well, we have not created any proprietary connection protocols or metadata models. This means that Nokia Music should function with any MTP-compliant device, whether it be a Nokia device or another brand MP3 player.
When you open Nokia Music, it will be hard to miss the ‘Store’ tab at the top. We’ve started rolling out Nokia Music Stores in many countries around the world and when a Store is launched in your country, you will see various new features being enabled that enhance the Nokia Music experience further. Things such as artwork retrieval and a recommendations feature. Unfortunately, this Beta version doesn’t support the Music Store features yet.
As this is a Beta release, there are a few issues still to be resolved as well as some performance improvements we would like to make. In the meantime, thank you for trying Nokia Music and please post as many comments and suggestions as you have time to make. I am especially interested to hear the what of features you would like to see introduced in future versions.
Thanks again for your time,
Mark Wheatley
Product Manager, Nokia Music for PC
Nokia doing well with latest application…but all of them are separate
You need tons of software to do all operation well =(
Comment by Alex — May 13, 2008 @ 4:28 pm
Unfortunately, Nokia Music DOES NOT WORK AT ALL on my Windows XP SP3 machine.
It is installed properly, but clicking on “Nokia Music” even after a reboot has really no effect. There are processes called “NokiaMusic.exe” (twice), “NokiaMServer.exe” listed in the task manager. Terminating these processes and trying to run Nokia Music afterwards does not result in anything else than described above.
Please fix! (Nokia PC Suite 6.86 with connected N95 and Panda Internet Security running)
Comment by Philipp — May 13, 2008 @ 4:34 pm
Add: MS .NET Framework 1-3 and Service Packs are on the machine, same applies for security updates.
Comment by Philipp — May 13, 2008 @ 4:37 pm
Hello,
I’m completely agreeing with Alex.
There is a lot of good stuff, but they are all separate. But maybe some day (when the Ovi -service is finally released and fully working) they become one.
Comment by Samuli — May 13, 2008 @ 4:38 pm
Can you make it possible to change the installer language before proceeding with the installation? Just something that might help people who, for some reason, due to the localization settings in Windows get a strange language as the defualt in setup.
Also, could you fix the music file association setup to work so that when “associate all supported files” (ok, I don’t know what that is in English, as the interface was in Finnish for me) is unchecked, all the supported music filetypes are unchecked. I don’t like to have to uncheck them all manually…
Comment by Filip — May 13, 2008 @ 4:39 pm
Looks and feel very nice, but is it possible to make it work over Bluetooth?
Comment by Alex — May 13, 2008 @ 4:48 pm
It will be really great if you can edit Playlist from you mobile phone on a Desktop. Also will be great if NMP could download missing data. Find more … feature does not work.
Comment by Alex — May 13, 2008 @ 5:07 pm
Not working on my XP SP3 too.
Comment by horia — May 13, 2008 @ 5:30 pm
Everyone: we’ll investigate the SP3 thing asap.
Comment by Tommi Vilkamo — May 13, 2008 @ 5:55 pm
I’m completely unable to install the app on my XP SP2. The installation goes as if it’s fine, I get past the accept screen, and it unpacks stuff (I guess that’s what it’s doing) and then says that the installation was interrupted and has failed. No changes were made to my machine, try again later.
I rebooted and tried again, same thing. I checked the Add/Remove programs menu, it’s not listed in there, either. Any suggestions?
Comment by Ricky — May 13, 2008 @ 5:59 pm
[…] it a rip and let them know what you think! Some people are reporting that they are having issues getting it to run on XP SP3 […]
Pingback by Nokia Music PC Application Launched « The Symbian Blog — May 13, 2008 @ 6:14 pm
Ricky -
This may be an issue with the .NET3 download. If you don’t already have this on your PC the installer gets this for you from Microsoft. Unfortunately you need .NET3 to use the application.
If you try installing .NET3 directly from the link below the installation should work OK - if you have problems installing .NET3 then this may be a seperate issue that you have with .NET3 that we can’t really fix for you. Anyway, give this a try and let us know how you get on…
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=10CC340B-F857-4A14-83F5-25634C3BF043&displaylang=en
Comment by Mark Wheatley — May 13, 2008 @ 7:05 pm
[…] AllAboutSymbian, Nokia Music PC application Beta launched. You can download it from Nokia Beta […]
Pingback by biskero.org home page — May 13, 2008 @ 7:07 pm
Like it works great with my N95 very pretty
Comment by Hector Gutierez — May 13, 2008 @ 7:10 pm
Same issue as Ricky Cadden here, XP sp2, will try later at vista.
And I would leave the obligatory “mac version please” comment here, but Nokia Multimedia Transfer is already awesome.
Comment by Fernando — May 13, 2008 @ 7:10 pm
…aaaaaand I just saw Mark Wheatley’s comment, disregard mine then.
Comment by Fernando — May 13, 2008 @ 7:12 pm
[…] post by admin Posted in 1024 | Leave a […]
Pingback by Nitrio Mobile Blog » Blog Archive » Nokia Music PC application launched (early beta) - what do you think? — May 13, 2008 @ 7:13 pm
Thanks Mark, giving it a go now, will update soon.
Comment by Ricky — May 13, 2008 @ 7:18 pm
Problems I encountered:
- tremendous memory usage (200MB all processes counted)
- issues with displaying artist in different views (albums, tracks etc)
- a tad sluggish scrolling
- WMP11-like tag handling
I think that you should also ditch the album artist tag, since it causes more trouble than benefit to average user. If some songs on an album have album artist fields filled and the others don’t, the program shows the album as different items.
Other than that, I really like the look and feel of the app.
Comment by jeflon — May 13, 2008 @ 7:26 pm
It would be so great if you could PLEASE provide an easy way of transfering music from itunes to Nokia Music. From the (unprotected)mpeg4 and AAC itunes format. (itunes offers to import all windows media player music and convert, could you offer a similar feature). Many people have ipods and so do I, so i still have to use itunes to sync my ipod. I could not handle having to find all of my CDs again to make a new library.
P.S. another problem me and many of my friends have, is that all of the music I buy from the Nokia Music store has DRM protection so I can’t put it on my other devices. The Nokia Music Store is already starting to look outdated becuse itunes now have itunes Plus (DRM free music). Thank you.
Comment by James — May 13, 2008 @ 7:48 pm
I totally agree with the comment above. I have had the same problem, but it has forced me just to use my ipod for music and not my phone. Also please can you allow for an option that allows you to import album art also from itunes as I have spend years editing my album art and song information on itunes.
(Maybe you could try to set up a system that syncronises both your itunes and your Nokia library).
Comment by John — May 13, 2008 @ 7:55 pm
I found the fix. Apparently, it’s somewhat common for the .Net v2.0 installation to become corrupt, sometime after installing v3.0. I was able to use this cleanup tool (http://astebner.sts.winisp.net/Tools/dotnetfx_cleanup_tool.zip) to remove *only* v2.0 (you have to specify in the drop-down box) and then reboot, run Windows Update, and re-install 2.0. After that I was able to install Nokia Music with no problems, I’m importing my library now.
Comment by Ricky — May 13, 2008 @ 7:57 pm
Hi. As a user, I’m very interested on this app. But while is a Beta version, I suggest you to inclue on that a scrobble for sync listened tracks with Last.fm (www.last.fm) .For device and Nokia Music PC app also.
Comment by Thiago Bomfim — May 13, 2008 @ 8:48 pm
@Thiago - While I completely agree with the desktop scrobbling request, you can already scrobble all tracks played on your device with this app:
http://www.symbian-guru.com/welcome/2008/04/mobbler-scrobble-your-heart-away.html
I’ve been using it for a while and it works great. Just sits in the background and passes your tracks along to Last.FM.
Comment by Ricky — May 13, 2008 @ 9:08 pm
Great app!
First impressions: I haven’t had any issues yet. I have Vista and up-to-date machine, with 3 giga’s of memory. Very snappy, looks great.
More as this developes.
Comment by Henrikki — May 13, 2008 @ 9:27 pm
Hi guys. I am a big fan of Last FM myself and would love to get Nokia Music integrated with AudioScrobbler. It won’t happen in our first formal release but soon afterwards hopefully!
Comment by Mark Wheatley — May 13, 2008 @ 9:30 pm
I upgraded to SP3 just last week and the app is working fine for me - moving playlists to and from my N95 no problem.
Comment by Hector Gutierez — May 13, 2008 @ 9:33 pm
Problems
1. My Nokia N95 does not showup in Nokia Music PC Client.
2. Music PC Client shows the Nokia music store is unavailable.
I have XP SP2. The Nokia Music PC Client installed fine and searched out the music on my PC and plays it fine. It also showed and played my UK Nokia Music shop purchases but cannot access the UK Nokia Music shop.
I connect my N95 to PC by Nokia PC suite v and cable connection.
Details are:-
PC Connectivity Solution:
Version 8.15.0.0
[Nokia Connectivity Cable Driver:]
Version 6.86.11.0
Operating system:
Microsoft Windows XP 32-bit Edition, Service Pack 2
Language: English
Language for non-Unicode programs: English
Detected Internet browsers:
- Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0 (Default browser)
- Mozilla Firefox 2.0
Detected Bluetooth stacks:
- Microsoft (Version: 5.1.2600, Build: 2180)
Comment by Paul — May 13, 2008 @ 9:57 pm
Thanks for your comments so far.
Couple of quick responses -
jeflon:
The ‘Album Artist’ issue we are aware of and working on.
Memory use is currently higher than we would like and we hope to reduce this soon. As for scrolling - there are some issues with .NET in this area but we have just been told that some enhancements with .NEt3.5 (due soon) resolve all of these
Ricky:
Thanks for posting your fix much appreciated!
James:
If you have your iTunes library in your ‘MyMusic’ folder this should automatically be imported into the Nokia Music library when you first start the application. If this didn’t happen I’d be interested in hearing a bit more about your PC setup as this has been working fine for our testing team.
As for your comments on DRM - Digital music retailing is a fast changing business and the Nokia Music Store will be keeping pace, I am sure of that
John:
iTunes does not embedd art in its files in a way that is compliant with open standards. Nokia Music embeds the art into the file as ID3 ‘front-cover’ so that the art shows on ALL media players and portable devices. If only iTunes did the same…
Still, I am happy to say that when the Music Store element is released you will be able to automatically retrieve album art using an AMG webservice - this is going to be a great way of making sure your art and other metadata is kept up to date in your music collection.
Phew - long post! I apologise in advance that I won’t be able to respond to all your comments quickly but please keep them coming as this is invaluable feedback for us. Thanks again!
Comment by Mark Wheatley — May 13, 2008 @ 10:07 pm
Paul:
Connect in ‘Media’ mode and you will see your N95. This connection mode confusion is an issue for us - in future N series devices you will see a combined PC Suite/Media mode to make this less confusing.
Comment by Mark Wheatley — May 13, 2008 @ 10:26 pm
Alex:
Bluetooth/WLAN transfer is a feature we are looking at for a future version - support for this is already on the devices roadmap.
Playlist editing on the device is another feature we are waiting on full support from the devices to implement - in the meantime you have to create the playlist on the PC and drag it across to the device.
Comment by Mark Wheatley — May 13, 2008 @ 10:29 pm
[…] music to my Nokia N95 has always been a pain. With the release of the Nokia Music Client, things should get much […]
Pingback by Early beta release of Nokia Music | Mobileography — May 13, 2008 @ 10:42 pm
This is interesting: I have purchased music from Nokia Music Shop. I couldn’t play the music on my PC, Windows music player had some issues..I always got a error message. When transferred to phone, the files played with no problem.
With your new app I can play the music just fine on my PC too!
Comment by Henrikki — May 13, 2008 @ 11:18 pm
Ugh, I’m still fighting with .Net to get this app running! Earlier I was able to open Nokia Music PC Client and import 54GB of music. After a reboot, the app refuses to run, offering this error message:
There has been a problem starting Nokia Music. Running the Repair option for Nokia Music in the Add Remove Programs section of Windows Control Panel may resolve this problem.
It doesn’t.
Comment by Ricky — May 13, 2008 @ 11:31 pm
dotNet is awful, but I finally got it to install.
First impressions:
1. Slowish, maybe it’s just my pc (1.5ghz intel core solo, 512mb) or maybe I was trying to multitask too much, but 95mb of ram is a little too much for an audio manager.
2. It monitors music folders, yay! It automatically detected when I copied some music from an external HD to the my music folder using windows explorer, nice touch.
3. USB mode, can you make it so that when you plug a phone in PC Suite mode the app offers to change it to MTP mode?
4. Why does my .m3u playlists that I already had in the phone appear as an unknown artist?
5. The album/track lookup feature is VERY useful! Can it also embed album artwork?
6. The Queue concept seems a little convoluted, when you click the play button on a artist name bar, the queue should clear itself before adding the tracks. As it is now, you click it expecting to listen to tracks only by the artist you chose, but if you had another artist on the queue before it’ll play again, confusing the user.
7. The same with tracks not having the “Album artist” tag showing up as “Unknown artist” in the “Tracks” view. It’s a little confusing.
Ok, that’s all for now
I’m still poking around this app.
Comment by Fernando — May 14, 2008 @ 12:10 am
I tried connecting in Media mode but no success.
On plugging in the micro-usb to my N95, latest firmware I can choose PC Suite, Data Transfer, Image Print or Media Player. I chose Media Player.
I then get the message on the PC that:
Nokia N95 connected in a non-compatable USB mode.
Comment by Paul — May 14, 2008 @ 12:20 am
Could you also implement an “album art fixer” code? For example I imported into my Nokia Music library a Cardigans album with art on the tag, and it showed up on Nokia Music, but when I transfered it to my phone it didn’t show up because it wasn’t the front cover or whatever. Have Nokia Music force the album art into being the front cover.
Comment by Fernando — May 14, 2008 @ 12:32 am
Also, a couple screenshots to illustrate my points.
7: hxxp://junk.fwrnando.com/artists.JPG & hxxp://junk.fwrnando.com/artists2.JPG
4: hxxp://junk.fwrnando.com/m3u.JPG (those are standard .m3us that were already on the card)
and a new error while transfering 20 songs: hxxp://junk.fwrnando.com/errors.JPG even though the songs did transfer right, but I still think the error message should be more specific
(a-ha! my comment wasn’t showing up because of the links)
Comment by Fernando — May 14, 2008 @ 12:35 am
Hmm.. .NET based app, how easy is it to port that to linux and osx? I mean, if it’s an itunes competitor (device-handler & music store app), then shouldn’t osx and linux compability be a high prio to port to? What about the file size footprint, is .NET the reason why it’s 60megs? I mean, winamp has basicly the same functionality (and more) and it’s “only” 9 megabytes.
Don’t get me wrong, the app looks killer and works just fine on my machine, but still is .NET really the way to go?
Comment by Mattias — May 14, 2008 @ 12:37 am
@Mattias - as someone who has wasted the better part of his day fighting with various .NET installs (v2 SP1, v3, v2, etc), and who uses Winamp on a daily basis, all day, I can say that no, .NET is DEFINITELY not the way to go. This is completely ridiculous.
What’s sad is that aside from the choice to *use* .NET, my issues aren’t Nokia’s fault, but they’re directly preventing me from using this app that I’ve been looking forward to for several months.
Here’s hoping (probably blindly) that the next iteration of this app isn’t based on .NET……
Comment by Ricky — May 14, 2008 @ 1:03 am
[…] Oggi i Nokia Beta Labs hanno rilasciato la prima beta di una nuova applicazione per PC - Nokia Music PC Client - che permette la gestione sincronizzata della musica su PC e dispositivo mobile, quindi non solo i cellulari Nokia ma tutti i lettori mp3 compatibili con il Media Transfer Protocol (MTP). Questa applicazione permetterà poi anche di acquistare musica sul Nokia Music Store ma per adesso questa funzione non è presente. Tra le possibilità offerte c’è quella del drag&drop del contenuto del CD direttamente sul cellulare con un solo click. La nota dolente è che è ancora la prima beta e sono stati riscontrati diversi problemi di installazione e funzionamento. Non riesce ad installarsi su XP SP3, ma ci sono anche problemi con XP SP2. Forse la causa è anche da attribuirsi al .NET Framework (di cui sul PC devono essere presenti tutte e tre le versioni e i relativi aggiornamenti della sicurezza), sperando che con la versione 3.5, attualmente in fase di beta, si possanno risolvere queste incompatibilità. Intanto se volete provarla, potete scaricarla cliccando qui sotto. (via Nokia Beta Labs Blog) […]
Pingback by Nokia Music PC Client: il futuro rivale di iTunes! : Spaziocellulare News Magazine — May 14, 2008 @ 2:23 am
[…] Via Nokia Beta Labs. […]
Pingback by acidpixel.com » Nokia Music PC — May 14, 2008 @ 3:36 am
App installed well on XP SP3 with all .net updates. Wouldn’t import music from network drive, I should say it didn’t see any files in subdirectories. Once music was copied locally app instantly started seeing the tracks regardless of organization.
My problem with Nokia’s recent releases is they are becoming larger and larger. I can accept the use of .net but Nokia PC Apps have become bloatware.
Comment by Matthew — May 14, 2008 @ 5:32 am
Does this mean I have 400mb used or 400mb free? http://junk.fwrnando.com/pointfour.jpg
(I figured out that is what I used, since when I hover above the phone icon on the left pane it says 0.3gb remaining)
Anyway, this is a little confusing, and there’s really need to measure in gbs? When I’m only using a 1gb card.
Comment by Fernando — May 14, 2008 @ 6:14 am
2 Mark
Thank you for information. Will test it more today. Also want to add that it works slow during background scan with my Core 2 Duo 2 Ghz,2 Gb of Ram and music on external drive. I’ve got 25-30 gb of music on it,and after 15 min it scans only 14 gb
Comment by Alex — May 14, 2008 @ 7:48 am
BTW why it’s using external ffdshow audio decoder while playing? O_o
Comment by Alex — May 14, 2008 @ 9:28 am
[…] | Nokia Beta Labs Mas información | Nokia Music Beta trackback ¿Recomendarías este post? Más […]
Pingback by Nokia Music en versión beta — May 14, 2008 @ 10:41 am
This looks promising though it still does not transfer album art across to the phone! It shows the album art when i browse my N95 8GB in the Nokia Music application but it’s not visible on the phone. You shouldn’t have to maunually add album art on the phone!
Comment by wesbar — May 14, 2008 @ 12:01 pm
The application is interesting and puts Nokia Music close to Apple iTunes, though very barebones and without the Apple magic of UI perfection. Still, what I think suffers most in this application is podcasting management. Only phones with podcasting built-in in S60 can use podcasting right now.
Comment by Апостол Апостолов — May 14, 2008 @ 12:10 pm
Reinstalling .NET 1-3 had no effect but destroyed my Office.
Comment by Philipp — May 14, 2008 @ 4:56 pm
I fully agree with Alex!!!
Comment by Hip-Hop — May 14, 2008 @ 8:27 pm
After finally trying a few more things, I’ve gotten it to install.
@wesbar - It worked to transfer album art to my phone. I added the art through the desktop app and then synced, and the track showed my album art. Not sure what happened on your end.
@Anocton - You know there’s a downloadable file for the Podcasting, to add it to any S60v3 handset, even if it doesn’t have it built-in?
I’ve posted full thoughts on it here:
http://www.symbian-guru.com/welcome/2008/05/the-nokia-music-pc-client-has-potential.html
And also submitted those through the survey link up top, to keep in line with the purposes of the site.
Comment by Ricky — May 14, 2008 @ 11:16 pm
Suggestion:
I have a HTPC solution, so my PC is connected to my flat 32″ panel and I watch TV and do all media with it. I didn’t find any visual effects in the app. When you are just listening to the music some visual effects a lá Windows Media Center would be nice. When you are just listening to the music some visual aids would help living room look cooler, like a painting with music coming out of it.
The small window “mini” is cool BTW, but I’m looking for some full screen solution here.
Comment by Henrikki — May 14, 2008 @ 11:54 pm
This application seems to be simple and more like the iTunes application from Apple. If you don’t know, many people who have an iPod hate to use iTunes as they find it irritating, there are lot of other application available in the market that can do the work what iTunes does, hope Nokia Beta Labs has taken these points into consideration for this Nokia Music PC Client Beta release
Comment by Vikram Deo — May 15, 2008 @ 4:44 am
Chinese character in the song information is not supported/ coded wrongly.
Comment by Frank — May 15, 2008 @ 5:14 am
Cool Stuff =D
Comment by MoiN — May 15, 2008 @ 5:33 am
Hi!
When you can offer something which not need upgrade all environment before use some application. When there will be support non microsofts slaves as linux or mac users?
Ask Pertti
Comment by pertti saarinen — May 15, 2008 @ 10:24 am
Great work. I am a user of itunes and trying to switch over my huge media library to Nokia Music PC App. Found a couple of problems in it and have certain suggessions.
A lot of work is needed to improve Navigation, espacially if you have a lot of music to search through. I love the itunes naviagation of artist , album and genre. Search is very fast as compared to itunes. There is some problem with the look of the media browsing UI. Scroll bars are small and there is no direct jump using key board. Some problems are there to display certain unicode characters. Album view have duplicate items for same album name and same is the case for Artist. Am I missing some thing or it is a problem. Miniplayer mode is cute.
As I would also love to use this as my PC media player. it would be very much helpful if it has some functionality like minimize to system tray and have some context menu for the system tray icon with commands like Pause, Stop, Next, previous and the a tooltip for currently playing track would be great addition.
Comment by Omar — May 15, 2008 @ 12:30 pm
I think the application is getting better and better.
I’m wondering it doesn’t support live search and why Artist and Title are separated.
m
Comment by Marco Paglia — May 15, 2008 @ 12:58 pm
Why Mac OSX is not supported??
Ah! is WPF and Microsoft DRM. When are you going to listen to customers?? Challenging iTunes takes more than this.
It was a mistake to offer music with DRM and also trying a client based on .NET and WPF.
Good luck!
Comment by enrique — May 15, 2008 @ 2:29 pm
I had a problem installing the application and followed Ricky’s instructions (post #22) to remove and reinstall NET 2.0 and I also installed NET 3.5. The application still fails to install, keeps asking for various product keys. Can you guys at Beta Labs help? Thanks
Comment by scrubsja — May 15, 2008 @ 3:34 pm
Please add radio and podcast. i have podcast on Nokia N82 and i should be able to sync all things i get on my phone to be sync on my Nokia music app on the PC. Also the internet radio that is available for the N82 should be on the music app. it would be nice have a little more fluid expertise if i come to a computer screen and then what i have on my phone screen, i don’t want any less of an app. i want the same but more content. Nseries video converter should be part of the app since thier is one available for the phones. i feel that their have been a lot of apps for nseries phones allover the place this might make every thing come in one useful area
Comment by mo — May 15, 2008 @ 4:51 pm
scrubsja, what product keys is it asking for? There’s nothing in Nokia Music installation that should request any product keys.
Comment by Daniel Puzey — May 15, 2008 @ 5:12 pm
I’m no iTunes fan, but it can be used to manage “fair use” transfer of music to your personal handsets.
I use iTunes Agent on my wife’s laptop to automatically sync MP4/AAC non-DRM to N82. You only need define which playlist in iTunes is the source and identify the handset using a text file as tag for the device (e.g. place a file called N82.txt on the SD card.)
Plug the N82 into the laptop in memory card mode and it just syncs down when you say go.
On Linux I store high quality FLAC encoded files. Using Amarok and its script plug-in “Transkode” music can be fed from FLAC to handsets transcoded as ACC/MP3/Ogg (or whatever you choose from gstreamer.)
Comment by Paul B. — May 15, 2008 @ 5:37 pm
I am Mac user, so no use for me. Well, perhaps one day Nokia won’t be so MS centric in PC solutions.
Comment by pekka — May 15, 2008 @ 5:38 pm
First impressions:
Looks like iTunes copy. Also looks a bit too chunky (or retro) to me. I was expecting more new ideas not just copying.
I also was a bit disappointed about the general slowness of the whole application (or maybe it’s just my PC). Maybe these issues will be sorted before official version.
Comment by Sami Halinen — May 15, 2008 @ 5:45 pm
I am a user of iTunes, Yahoo! Music, Real Rhapsody, Napster, Zune Music and Winamp.
Is there really anything “new” to bring to a music app? They all have the same features, just stuffed in different locations. As for the comment about it looking like iTunes, I have to disagree. It is in line with other Nokia applications as far as look and feel goes. Unfortunately, this includes the slowness of our apps. I didn’t feel like this was a copy of someone else’s work so much as I felt it was a copy of our own. I was surprised how long it took for the app to find all of my music considering it was in one location. The initial load took around 45 minutes for 600 songs. I’m excited to see the link to the store working so that I know if we are going to compete well with the other options out there. If the store runs as slow as the app, my suggestion is don’t bring it out because the competition is lightning fast on the store side.
I feel for the Mac users. As long as Apple makes it costly for software development (Approval process) and only carries less than 5% market share in the PC world, you will always be without. Consider it a feature of that “robust” OS you have
Comment by Dustin Randall — May 15, 2008 @ 6:47 pm
Got the application working, I removed NET 2.0, NET 3.0 and NET 3.5. Installed NET 2.0 SP1 and the Nokia Music PC app that re-installed NET 3.0 and itself. I will post my comments on the functionality of the app later.
Comment by scrubsja — May 15, 2008 @ 11:00 pm
The app is not compatible with E90?
One of the greatest goals of Nokia was to produce “professional” phone with multimedia capabilities, and now…
Can you explain this to a great fan of Nokia Beta Labs, but… with a E90!?
Comment by Jorge Dinis — May 16, 2008 @ 1:47 am
^Are you sure? Reviews say the E90 has MTP mode. And “Nokia Music should function with any MTP-compliant device, whether it be a Nokia device or another brand MP3 player.”
If it still does not work, it’s called beta for a reason.
Comment by Fernando — May 16, 2008 @ 4:27 am
In CD ripping options, how about advanced MP3 encoder options for power users, like VBR, VBR quality, stereo options? Take a look for example CDex (http://cdexos.sourceforge.net/).
Of course this should be hidden behind “advanced” button, so you don’t have to adjust these options, but I think power users should have more control.
Comment by AP — May 16, 2008 @ 9:53 am
Agreed with AP
good point
Comment by Alex — May 16, 2008 @ 4:04 pm
rather than yet another music manager tool (of which I now seem to several: itunes, media monkey, tagscanner, aimp, xmplay + the music “managers” that come with pc suite and N series suite (which I’m sorry to say are totally awful)
Why can’t I just have an easier way to update my music player with tracks I put on it.
I can take my 8gb (1000+ songs on it) card out, pop it into my pc and copy tracks to it. I can (manually) create a m3u playlist but then when I put my card back in the n95 I have to wait 30 minutes or so for it “refresh” and it’s a bit pot luck if it finds anything.
Can’t you just improve the music player on the phone, to allow me to use any music manager. or even better, just use windows explorer to drag and drop.
Why is managing music on the N95 so complex and so slow
Comment by netan — May 16, 2008 @ 7:36 pm
installed and ran it for the first time an hour ago… it’s still scanning my music library (18gb) and taking up 20% cpu and 170mb Ram.
Talk about slow going!
y’know I can’t help thinking that this is just a reinvention of the wheel, just slower and clunkier!
so now I have got installed:
iTunes
Media Monkey 3
Songbird 0.5
Nokia PC suite music manager
Nokia N Series Music manager
Windows Media Player.
all doing the same job as each other but for different devices. But 3 of these access their own music store - which I guess is real reason they exist and forve you to use them.
luckily for me, I’ve never bought digital music, nor ever will. (I buy physical music)
Comment by netan — May 16, 2008 @ 10:07 pm
it uses a lot of ram and it’s slow.. taken a good 90 minutes/2 hours to scan my music. and it’s now using 69% of CPU and 575Mb of ram (and climbing)
agree with netan above… I understand it’s beta, but it needs a lot more work… actually I think it needs a lot less work. let us use our preferred applications more easily.
Comment by Iain — May 16, 2008 @ 11:08 pm
Will other devices be supported in the future? I own a N80 Internet Edition and I’d like to be supported from Nokia Music.
Comment by Konstantinos — May 18, 2008 @ 11:59 pm
It would be great to have an option to synchronize playlists after an update of the playlistfile. That would offer the possibility to continue using one’s favorite musicplayer. If I synchronize once, change something in the playlist with my music player (f.e. winamp/WMP) and want to adopt the changes on my mobile the programm doesn’t consider the changes in the playlist .
Comment by Alphadex — May 19, 2008 @ 1:51 am
Similar problems that others have already explained.
Resource hungry, yes I only have 512mb of RAM, but thats never been an issue for WMP11.
Constant program shutdowns (a reboot is sometimes required)
On the plus side…
When it is working, the importing process was painless.
Copying straight from CD to device (N95 8GB) again was fantastic!!! No more double tasking!
Comment by BrentR — May 19, 2008 @ 12:47 pm
[…] Nokia Music PC application launched (early beta) - what do you think? - Nokia launches iTunes competitor. May 13th. […]
Pingback by This week in mobility - week #20 — May 20, 2008 @ 12:21 am
Is it true that the Nokia Music PC will embedd the album cover into the music files. If that’s true then I will definitely switch over to Nokua Music PC and delete iTunes from my PC
I also hope that Nokia Music PC will find most of the album covers automatically
Comment by Ben — May 20, 2008 @ 3:39 am
[…] Via: Nokia Music en versión beta >> Nokia Beta Labs […]
Pingback by Nokia Music beta,Celulares Nokia — May 20, 2008 @ 9:40 pm
I just downloaded and started using the Nokia Music for PC application and I have to say I’m impressed.
After the imense trouble I had using Nokia Music Manager to do one very simple thing - move existing music from my PC to my N95 - I was expecting more of the same. But so far, so good.
The main thing I want to do with a piece of software is move music from my PC to my phone and this lets me do it very easily.
So far, it hasn’t crashed on me but I’m still in the middle of importing my 19,750-track music library.
I just have two very minor suggestions at this point:
1. Letters with umlauts and other accents are not appearing correctly. For example, Bjork (with an umlaut over the ‘o’) appears as BjA?rk where A has a tilde over it and ? is the paragraph marker symbol. Beyonce (with an accent over the ‘e’) is BeyoncA? where A has the tilde over it and ? is the copyright symbol.
2. It would be nice to be able to continue to see the artist names after double-clicking on one to see the Albums.
Other than these two minor things, this is a great piece of software that I will be using as the default method of managing the music on my phone. Good job!
Comment by Russell — May 20, 2008 @ 10:58 pm
Didn’t Nokia aquire Trolltech? I have a tip: why not use their Qt to make desktop apps as it would allow us to run these app on Mac and Linux too. Of course native Cocoa app would be acceptable too…
Comment by FOO — May 20, 2008 @ 11:20 pm
Hey Tomi,
Couple of points… Not sure if these have been raised or not…
- Media Keys - Should work when application is minimized
- Any way of integrating podcasting at all?
- It’d be cool if this could manage movies as well…
- M4A conversion would be cool
- Toolbar on the taskbar’d be cool as well
It’s not bad but you could do alot more with it… just have a look at what Winamp offers…
Comment by Angus Gibbins — May 21, 2008 @ 2:56 am
Ok, there are a few more things…
Firstly, I left the “import” running for about four hours and it had only managed to import 6,300 of my 19,750 tracks. I therefore can’t use it as my main music management solution at the moment.
Secondly, I noticed when I hit the “Back” button after double-clicking on an artist, it goes back to the top of the artist list. It should position the window on the artist I double-clicked on.
Thirdly, it’s not filling in the artist name for albums, even if all the tracks on the album have the same artist. I’d like it to check the artist name on the tracks on the album and if they’re all the same, set the album artist name to the same. If they’re different, set the album artist name to “Various”.
Finally, if I’ve sorted the ‘Album’ view by Artist and double-clicked on an album, when I go ‘back’, the album list is re-sorted by Album. It should maintain its sort column.
I’ll definitely be using this software to move music from my hard drive to my N95, though, as it’s the best I’ve used for this so far.
Comment by Russell — May 21, 2008 @ 1:43 pm
Me again.
I think it’s great the way each album in the artist search results is separated with a horizontal line.
It would be even better to have a way of playing the entire album in a single click (without having to select all the tracks on the album and moving them to the Queue).
Comment by Russell — May 21, 2008 @ 1:50 pm
Thanks for your comments - these suggestions are all being taken on board - if only we had the time for all of them! I have some specific replies for Russell.
The missing album artist detail is because we currently use the AlbumArtist metadata to represent an album - so where you have track artists but not album-artists, you’ll see this apparent problem. It’s something we’re aware of and are looking at various solutions for.
As for playing an entire album from search results (or a drill-down view), you should be able to use the album art. Try double-clicking or using the right-click menu to “Play Now”.
Please keep the comments coming!
Comment by Daniel Puzey — May 21, 2008 @ 2:26 pm
@Ricky ; Yes, Ricky. Works fine. I’m using to sync my tracks on Last.fm, but I think that an app doing off-line sync (with no network on phone)could be a great feature do Nokia Music PC.
Comment by Thiago Bomfim — May 21, 2008 @ 8:14 pm
Nice application, big improvement over the existing Music Manager (faster this get replaced the better). I one of those on the nokia v apple decision loop, currently a heavy user of itunes mainly as its offers seamless integration with the device (ipod) and offers the best user experience over something like windows media player. But I keep hoping that Nokia get their act together for multimedia operations, the current pc suite offering is too diverse, too many small apps with lots of overlaps (add in several of these beta offerings and things get very confused). This is a step in the right direction…I await the follow up to keep me away from those iphone things! Add in podcasts, video, ringtones & recorder files and you might make me remove itunes!
Comment by mvan — May 22, 2008 @ 2:35 pm
For me this is useless since it doesn’t support Ogg.
Comment by Kimmo Rämö — May 22, 2008 @ 11:28 pm
Hi, is there anyway of giving the songs grades like in the iTunes ?
And also does nokia music pc have “smart playlists” like the iTunes so that you could have for example a playlist containing the songs with the highest grades.
If the Nokia Music PC has theese features plus that it gets album art and embedds it then I would definetely delete iTuner from my computer
Comment by ben — May 23, 2008 @ 4:32 pm
Nokia Music supports “Rating” metadata, so you can grade your songs from 0-5 stars, and sort by the rating too. You should see a column for Rating in any of the track views, and in the track details editor.
There are built in “auto-playlists”, which aren’t going to be customizable in the first release, but one of them is “Top Rated” - hopefully this is enough to get you started!
Album art retrieval won’t be available at the moment, but full metadata lookup and artwork retrieval will be active by the final release.
Comment by Daniel Puzey — May 23, 2008 @ 6:56 pm
I agree with a lot of the previous comments above about the slowness of the program. It took almost two minutes to update an artist name on 15 songs.
Another strange thing is that when I imported all my music it doubled the songs in the the player. It shows most songs twice now. I am not sure if this was an error on my part but I am pretty sure that the songs are only located in one directory. I will check into this.
Otherwise it looks nice and has a good feel for a beta.
Comment by Mike — May 23, 2008 @ 10:10 pm
Initial impressions are good. Comments:
1. When trying to update, error message that no connection present
2. Very slow to open
3. Took ages to import music collection
4. Not clear if contents of music on phone is compared to specified location on computer when doing sync???
Comment by Utluna — May 24, 2008 @ 10:11 am
Ok, sounds good, but I read in one of the comments above that the Nokia Music PC will embedd album art into to the song files, isn’t that true ?
Comment by Ben — May 25, 2008 @ 3:41 am
The most relevant to a music client is the option to living out all others music players (All things in 1). One of more interesting browsers (Firefox), able the users to make a lot of things in a unique software, and these feature could change the way that customer works in his PC.
World of music players is a chaos; you need of several apps to manager all your tasks:
The best for manage and download your podcasts:
-iTunes
The more useful and friendly interface:
-Winamp
The best way to sync your tracks for your Nokia in Windows:
-Windows Media Player
To discover new songs and scroble your tracks:
-Last.fm (Pandora looks fine, but not works in all countries as Brazil)
Comment by Thiago Bomfim — May 27, 2008 @ 9:19 pm
I asked Nokia music to search for tracks to import into my music collection. I left it going for the whole day and night and it still said: “Nokia Music is searching for tracks to import into your music collection”. I have restarted the import and the same thing has happened. What do I do? PLEASE HELP, THANKS!
Comment by James — May 28, 2008 @ 2:36 pm
Loving the App! It’s my default Music PlLayer.
Here’s a few suggestions -
1. It would be good if this could replace the Nokia Music Manager.
2. Being able to Manage your Music in your phone via the application would be brilliant, Like managing your Albums, Artists etc.
3. The equalizer sounds could be improved on.
4. Plug-Ins would be a great feature for the Equalizer like special effects etc
Comment by Darren Martin — May 29, 2008 @ 7:24 pm
The bad points are that it is Very VERY slow to start up and slow to do anything. My other music players are faster, which would lead me to use them instead, when unfortunately I prefer the Nokia Music App!
Comment by Darren Martin — May 29, 2008 @ 7:26 pm
Nice job.
I miss a few things:
1. File/Directory browser (important)
2. “Update library” button
Also, the surrent version (0.010) has some problems with non-ANSI symbols - I use Cyrillic and some of the MP3 tag fields are displayed incorrectly - Artist is fine, but song name is squares (or vice versa). Winamp and WMP11 have no issues with these, as well as my Samsung YP-T10 MP3 player…
Comment by Kamen — May 30, 2008 @ 12:46 pm
I managed to fix my music import problem by importing each of my music folders individually. This could be a problem with the program or maybe it was because NOKIA MUSIC IS VERY SLOW.
SUGGESTIONS:
1) MAKE IT FASTER -it is really slow and often crashes.
2) MORE OPTIONS - E.g like Itunes being able to say whether your album is part of a compilation/Volume adjustment etc.
3) WHEN EDITING TRACK INFORMATION YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO GO TO THE NEXT TRACK WITHOUT COMING OUT OF THE EDITOR (I.E. LIKE ITUNES).
4) Allow the now playing/queue section to be MINIMISED along with the my devices area.
5) Smart playists.
6)MOST IMPORTANTLY the average person (including me) does not want separate applications for music, videos and podcasts (maybe even pictures) COMBINE ALL OF THE APPLICATIONS TO MAKE IT MORE APPROACHABLE.
7) Thanks for adding support for the music store BUT WHY DOES IT STILL SHOW THE MUSIC PLAYER/ CURRENT DOWNLOADS BAR WHEN YOU ALREADY HAVE EXACTLY THE SAME THING IN THE APPLICATION, I know it can be minimised, but it should not be there in the first place.
BUT I love this application and there are many GREAT things about it (e.g. searching for track information is PERFECT). KEEP IT UP. THIS APP IS SERIOUS COMPETITION FOR ITUNES.
Comment by James — May 30, 2008 @ 3:56 pm
I think Nokia Music is an excellent application.
I have suffered the following issues though:
1. I connected my N95 8gb via cable and chose Media Player, initially it worked and the phone appeared on the leftside of the screen; however I accidentally unplugged the phone and now is will NOT find the phone when connected. I’ve tried to re-install the application and upgraded firmware on phone but no joy. I cannot now transfer any music to phone!
2. The album art when transferred to phone makes an excellent screen view, problems with it are that it is sporadic with what is chooses to display, sometimes it shows the art and sometimes not.
This promises to be one of the best applications for Nokia phone and PC. I will be no doubt very happy with it when the above bugs are sorted out.
Comment by Rodnokia — May 30, 2008 @ 7:43 pm
Another thing… pressing a key on the keyboard should take you to that letter in the list…
Pressing the back button should take you back to the previous view (IE with the same sorting, and where you were in the list)
Comment by Angus — May 31, 2008 @ 5:51 am
I can import my itunes plus files on my pc (these are drm free but have a modified apple tag) and play these on the Nokia Music PC Application without any problem but when I try to transfer them to my phone 6120 classic S60 3rd FP1 I cannot play these files. I know there are workarounds etc but I want choice in how I play these files (and others from other music stores) and not have to spend time hacking/converting etc..Do any current or future Nokia phones support playback of these files? I can play these on my SE K800i without any problems! So either restrict files that cannot be played on the devices from being imported or improve support on the devices, one reason for sticking with an itunes/ipod setup for now..
Comment by mvan — May 31, 2008 @ 9:51 am
Please add some options to the playlists to control the files to be transferred by size of memory allocated, so if I have a collection of 20GB of music and a phone card of 2GB I want to be able to set up a random playlist containing 1GB of music files to be transferred.
Comment by mvan — May 31, 2008 @ 9:53 am
[…] Mark Wheatley, Product Manager, Nokia Music for PC Justification: Ricky posting fixes for some .NET problems a lot of users were having, and getting them using the application. Prize: […]
Pingback by Nokia Beta Labs blog » Nokia Beta Labs Contributor of the Month, May 2008: Ricky Cadden — June 2, 2008 @ 6:33 pm
1. spend too much memory. (over 200MB)
2. too slow to import music. (it took more than 60min to import 3000songs 12GB. only a few min in itunes)
but
looks great. if it gets lighter and faster, primary player should be Nokia Music.
Comment by shiva — June 5, 2008 @ 12:10 am
Another bug… I have comments embedded as metadata in alot of my music… These comments don’t show up in Nokia Music Manager… I hope this gets fixed!!!
Comment by Angus Gibbins — June 5, 2008 @ 10:48 am
PLEASE, PLEASE DO THE FOLLOWING:
1) THE SEACH BAR - it should search for artist/track/album in ONE COMBINED BAR. ALSO it should bring up possible tracks AS YOU ENTER INFORMATION.
2) ALBUM ART - It was easy to add album art to the album BUT I COULD NOT FIND OUT HOW TO ADD IT TO EACH INDIVIDUAL TRACK. You may be able to do this BUT it is not clear how to.
3) DEVICE SPECIFIC PICTURES - A great thing to do for NOKIA devices (I know that the application also caters for other devices) is to add a picture of your NOKIA DEVICE MODEL when you connect it. (e.g. I have an n82 and there should be a picture of an n82 displayed, when I connect it.) It would look like a far more polished application if you did this) I KNOW IT CAN BE DONE BECAUSE IT DOES THIS IN SOME OTHE APPLICATIONS SUCH AS THE SOFTWARE UPDATER.
4) THIS APPLICATION IS MADE BY NOKIA THEREFORE NOKIA EXPECTS YOU TO TRANSFER TRACKS TO YOUR NOKIA DEVICE.
You MUST make it so that you have a PHONE SECTION in which you can make/transfer playlists into. ALL of which sync to your Nokia device. This is because MOST PEOPLE CANNOT TRANSFER THEIR ENTIRE MUSIC COLLECTION TO THEIR PHONE. (Until all of us have devices like the n96 or when there are bigger memory cards). SO THAT WHEN YOU OPEN THE MUSIC APP IN YOUR PHONE, THERE IS NOT ONE PLAYLIST WHICH HAS ALL OF YOUR MUSIC IN. Also, in this phone section you should be able to set a size limit (in terms of megabytes).
5) YOU should be able to minimise AT LEAST ONE of either the “my devices” or the “now playing/queue” bars (or you could COMBINE THE TWO). So that you have MORE SPACE for the main music section (thus more space to display track information).
6) ONE APPLICATION for music and videos (maybe podcasts and photos too) should be created to make it easier to manage multimedia on your phone.
The BIGGEST PROBLEM IS THAT THIS APPLICATION IS TOO SLOW (at doing everything - navigating and transfering music to my n82). Please make it run faster. Thank you Nokia because despite the above this is still a great application.
Comment by James — June 7, 2008 @ 10:52 pm
What you all are requesting is in other words iTunes…every thing you have said in this comments section is basically all the functions that itunes already has. Why not buy the next iPhone instead….then you have music player and phone in one and most importantely you have the best music program in the world iTunes
Comment by Ben — June 8, 2008 @ 2:34 am
An improvement over NMM, some misc items:
- Appallingly slow sync/transfer with N95 + 8GB MicroSDHC card (2+ hrs for 4GB - bah!)
- AAC missing from RIP format options, even though docs say it’s supported. My library is currently all in eAAC+ format.
- Auto-transfer needs the option to convert formats (I’d prefer eAAC+ on the N95, but keep library in plain AAC on the PC).
Comment by Simon — June 11, 2008 @ 8:30 am
I’m missing the possibility to set a proxy for internet connections. Or at least take the setting from IE. If you’re only possibility to access the net is via proxy, you’re currently lost.
Comment by magick — June 12, 2008 @ 12:18 pm
Any idea when we’re gonna see another Beta or final release of this??
Comment by Angus Gibbins — June 18, 2008 @ 3:34 am
Beta refresh is due very soon - within the next week, if all goes well. Watch this space!
Comment by Daniel Puzey — June 19, 2008 @ 4:51 pm
Hi everyone. The latest version is up now - thanks for all your comments so far a lot of your ideas have made it onto our ‘backlog’.
Just a reminder to all Vista users: because of a bug in the original Beta you will need to MANUALLY uninstall any earlier versions of the Nokia Music PC Client before installing this new version.
The next update will be in about 6 weeks, and that is likely to be the ‘final’ Beta upgrade before our ‘formal’ release.
Comment by Mark Wheatley — June 23, 2008 @ 2:20 pm
I transferred the DRM’d music which came along with the N73 Music Edition to the PC using this software. But those music is NOT playing on the PC with this software.
Please help solve this problem. Also, I second the Proxy support request.
Comment by Vinod — July 3, 2008 @ 5:49 pm