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Nokia Music Updated To v1.3, Still Sucks

By TheGuru on July 23, 2009

A few weeks ago, I seriously tried to use the Nokia N97 as my sole MP3 player, and Nokia’s experience fell flat on its face. Yesterday, the Nokia Music PC Client was updated to v1.3, and I hastily clicked through to read the full changelog, hoping that somehow, someway, the team had added necessities such as star rating and playcount synchronization, or better yet, auto playlists. Unfortunately, no such luck.

Nokia Music v1.3 is still the same feature-less music attempt that it was before, only the team has been slaving away to make it run smoother and require less resources. They’ve also worked on the album art handling, since that’s such a high priority these days, and updated the progress pane when you’re ripping CDs, which is apparently something tons of people still do.

I’m sorry, I simply can’t be impressed by this. The Nokia Music PC Client was first demo’d at the Nokia Go Play event in London in August 2007, and it took them 10 months after that to release the first beta. It’s been another 14 months and the client still hasn’t gained any significant features – they’re still trying to make it actually run smooth. Meanwhile, I’ll continue to use MediaMonkey, thank you. It’s mind-bogglingly full featured, runs smoother, requires less resources, and is something I can legitimately use as my desktop music manager, in addition to my portable device manager. Wake me up when Nokia is serious about music.

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TheGuru

TheGuru, aka Ricky Cadden, started Symbian-Guru.com in November 2006, out of his excitement for the S60 3rd Edition version of Symella. TheGuru has used Symbian devices since the Nokia 6620, and is known for his perspective as a power user. You can follow TheGuru on Twitter at @Rcadden

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  • LK
    I do like streaming music, but don't think it's a replacement for MP3s on a computer or my phone. Not for me anyway.

    On another note, I tried MediaMonkey to update album art and tags. Worked really well. I'm not going to use it as my actual media player, but as for tags and possibly syncing, I'll use it. Never touched Nokia Music and probably won't until you give the go-ahead.
  • Well, I think streaming is only part of a solution that replaces personal libraries. The other is subscription music. I have around 80GB of mp3s, 95% of which I have purchased (either the CD and ripped, or the digital-only version), and since combining last.fm with Napster to Go, I have left it behind. Oh, it's still available for streaming via MeCanto, but I don't touch it much. Just no need.
  • Kevin -

    I partially agree with your last statements - streaming music is an increasingly large part of my mobile music experience, but I still want that full synchronization, because there are times when streaming just won't cut it.
  • I haven't had near the problems all of you have had. I download my music to a specific folder, Nokia Music monitors that folder, and automatically transfers it to my device when connected.

    We are never going to see rated or favourited tracks until there is a standard for such things. I have not seen one and frankly don't expect to.

    That being said, I don't really use it all that much. For simple music management, there are better apps out there, but i don't really do that anymore, either.

    Why?

    Because a meticulously-managed personal music library downloaded (or sync'd) to one's phone is just dead. It's over. Even Apple is selling lesser capacity iPods (max size is 120, as opposed to 160 a year ago). People don't want to own music anymore, they want to listen to what's now and what's new. This is done via streaming like Last.fm and Spotify. Or, through a subscription music service like ZunePass or Napster-To-Go.

    If I want music, I either pull it up on a streaming app or simply say "xfer to device" and am done with it.
  • Mike
    I have to agree with you. It's mind-boggling that Nokia pushes phones like the Nokia 5800 Xpress Music, when their music software is nothing short of abysmal.

    Please step up your game, Nokia.
  • Andelson Marcelino
    It doesn't find any playlist that exists in my handset. I did try to transfers of one unique track to my device and it creates three folders on other place than the folder where my musics are. There's a lot of things to do yet.
  • live
    I've tried to use Nokia Music Store and it was awful!!!! I bought a N97 (in France) and in the package there is 100euros of music free. you have to use it on NMS.
    This experience was not a pleasure. Like said before, this software is very smoother and reguire a lot of ressource.
    The second thing is the search engine. Example.

    You're are looking for Bonobo: Nighlite. You fill the different fields and click on "search". The first result which appears is not the song but a confirmation of the artist ortograph (spelling)!Grr!!! (in iTunes the result is exactly what you want)

    then you click and the second result show you different album of the artist!!!! it's weird, strange and very incredible!
    For my search i haven't found the exactly response that i wanted...

    Please Nokia use your brains and make us a very good software. And please: kill those DRMs!!!!
  • Lloyd
    My biggest complaint about Nokia Music, other than it being a resource hog? I cannot use it to create a playlist on my phone. I am restricted to creating the playlist on the phone itself. The good news is Ovi Suite's playlist feature is worse! It tries to copy the files from the computer to the phone again, even though the files are already on the phone!
  • Red
    I wholeheartedly agree - I had all the fun of tagging all my MP3s the other day with album art. The WMP like album-art-internet-lookup thing is, quite frankly, poo - a few albums only updated 3 songs with album art (saying that i'm not a fan of the old hippity-hop or r'n'b, which i'm sure would have better results). Once i uploaded to the phone a load of random genres appeared as well (has anyone heard of the genre "127").

    What is it that Nokia don't get about software quality - they just make something that looks nice, but does the bare minimum (and most of the time it doesn't even do that).
  • Aatif
    Haha your last line reminded me of "Wake me up when September Ends"
  • The thing is, Sloan, I *want* to be impressed by Nokia Music. I really do. I remember when I saw the demo at the Go Play event, I wanted it so badly, and thought it was the coolest thing ever. Unfortunately, even after 2 years, it still lacks such basic functionality that I can't even justify installing it on my machine, much less suggesting it to others.
  • Not afraid to tell it like it is ;-) I like that. Nokia Music is in no comparison to the likes of MediaMonkey or iTunes for that matter. Other than the quality of the listening experience on the N series phones I think we can all agree the media player is nothing special at all.
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