About.com Rating

The Good

• Large music selection
• Works on web, mobile device, and game console
• Offline listening

The Bad

• No music discovery features
• Strange errors
• Lots of buffering and delays
• Doesn't learn your preferences
• App lacks features web player offers

The Price
App: Free
Service: US$9.99/month

Download at iTunes

There is no shortage of music services that, for a flat monthly fee, will give you access to a virtually limitless library of music you can stream to your computer, phone and, in some cases, game console.

But just because all of these services have roughly equivalent music libraries and pricing (almost all cost $5-10/month) doesn't mean they're equal. Some, like Xbox Music, lack key features and have too many problems to make them worth considering.

The Many Steps to Start

As its name makes pretty obvious, Xbox Music began life as a music service tied to Microsoft's Xbox game console. As a result, it requires that you have an Xbox Live account. If you don't already have one, creating one and getting to listening to music forces you through a few steps too many. Create your account, get a confirmation email, activate your account, sign up for Xbox Music, get an activation code via email or text, add your billing information, and so forth. It's not nearly as simple and smooth as getting started in iTunes Radio or Beats Music.

Once you've set up your account and installed the app, your initial experience is strangely empty. When you sign into the app, there's no suggested music, pre-built radio stations (on the first screen, at least), or indication that you're using a music service on the home screen (the web version of Xbox Music offers a much richer introduction than the app).

Instead, there's just a prompt to create a playlist. Doing so creates an empty playlist that you have to fill with music by searching for artists or songs.

Once I'd added some songs, though, things didn't get any easier. The first song I tried to play from my playlist, “Amy/Spent Gladiator 1,” by The Mountain Goats, returned an error that said the song couldn't be played. The next song I tried didn't show an error—but it didn't work either.

Buffering and Quirks

When I did find songs that would play, things didn't get much better. The first two songs I chose that did stream sounded great—rich, clear, high-quality music. But moving to the third song resulted in a very long quiet time while the app attempted to access the song. This buffering and quiet pause were common occurrences during my testing.

I solved the problem, this time, by pausing the song and then tapping play again. But when I skipped the fourth song, I ran into the same buffering delay again. The pause/play trick this time resulted in an error and then playback. All in all, a confusing and rough experience.

To Xbox Music's credit, I never encountered a buffering problem while listening to a song, only when moving from one song to the next. Every song I listened to, even while in low-cellular-coverage areas, played all the way through at high quality, with no issues.

While listening, you can save music to playlists for easy access later. You can only save entire albums, though, not individual songs (you can save individual songs through the web player, just not in the app). You can also download songs for offline listening (they expire when your subscription ends), but again, it's only full albums, not songs. When it comes to deleting music, you guessed it: you can only delete entire albums/playlists, not individual songs (again, the web player offers more features).

Radio: A Weak Signal

Like all modern streaming services, you can also access pre-built radio stations designed around artists or types of music. When I selected a test station, it started playing right away and sounded great. But Xbox Music's radio option lacks the basic thumbs up/thumbs down, favorite, and skip features so common to other music services. As a result, there's no way for a radio station to be customized to your preferences.

Radio stations are subject to the same buffering and non-responsiveness as playlists. I encountered some instances in which I had 5 bars on a 4G network and couldn't get the station to play at all. In fact, in some instances, buffering problems with Radio caused the app to stop working completely. I had to quit the app. When I came back to it hours later, it worked again.

No Discovery, No Learning

One key promise music services often make is that they'll help users discover new music that they'll love. Xbox Music doesn't make that claim, which is good: it doesn't have any of those features.

Because there's no way to indicate what songs or types of music you like, the service can't present any suggestions for new music. It can't learn your tastes and present music that other people with similar tastes like. It assumes you know what you like and don't want its help.

The Bottom Line

I don't have an Xbox, so I can't say what the experience of Xbox Music is on a game console. Perhaps it's far better. But on iOS device, Xbox Music isn't a good option. The app is a dumbed-down version of what's offered by the web player. It offers only the most rudimentary features (finding and listening to music) and lacks some features that have become standard (music discovery). Combine that with buffering problems and confusing errors and Xbox Music wouldn't even be my third choice for a streaming music service.

Download at iTunes