Tech Tip: Getting XBox Music Playlists To Sync To Windows Phone 8

I’ve been using Windows Phone since they first launched it with Windows Phone 7 and I’ve been an Xbox Music Pass subscriber (previously Zune Pass) for just as long. When Windows Phone 8 came out I was excited about all of the new features. One change they made was to drop the Zune software and use the new Xbox Music. I’ve read about a lot of frustrations when it comes to syncing your music and playlists to your phone.

Important Note

This is the biggest issue I’ve found. I’ve had songs not sync with my phone or playlists that wouldn’t update. Other people have had the playlist show up but with 0 songs on the phone. The key to getting your Xbox Music songs to sync is to click “Add To Collection” on your computer, THEN add them to your playlist after they’ve downloaded. In the image above, you can see some songs have a cloud next to them, while others don’t. When I look on my phone, only the songs with the cloud show up in the playlist.

Also, due to record labels and agreements, not every song or artist lets you add their music to your collection without buying it. Metallica seems to be an example of this.

Old Zune Playlists

I previously wrote an article on how to get your old Zune playlists to sync to WP8 with the new Xbox Music.

Local Music Playlists

This one can be tricky as well. You can use Media Player to create a playlist using your old local songs, then use the Windows Phone tool to sync those songs and your playlist to your phone. You could also copy over the songs to your phone, then add them all to the Now Playing option on your phone, then save that as a playlist. As long as you’re an Xbox Music Pass subscriber, the last option would be to save a copy of those songs to your cloud collection and use the Xbox Music version.