With the update coming today, Xbox Music for Windows Phone, that app that comes pre-loaded on devices running Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system, has finally caught up with its predecessor.
Microsoft announced the imminent arrival of an update for Xbox Music for Windows Phone, late last night, coming 19 days after it last deployed an update for customers using its Xbox Music Pass subscription service on devices like the Nokia Lumia 1020 and HTC One M8 for Windows. Starting with this update, users will find that the Live Tile for the Xbox Music application springs to life with album art and the artist’s name — exactly like it did before the company rebuilt the app and split it from the operating system itself. In addition to that, album art made using the ID3 standard will show up in the app. Patch notes also hint at better performance and playlist duplication.
If you’re wondering to yourself how this helps fix the Xbox Music experience overall, we’re still wondering ourselves. That being said, many Windows Phone users lobbied to get the Live Tile back after it disappeared from earlier versions of the app. An Xbox Music Pass costs users $9.99 a month and also includes streaming on the Xbox One, Xbox 360, Windows PCs and the web. Xbox Music apps for the iPhone and Android devices like the Samsung Galaxy S5 also exist.
There’s no word yet on what other features are on the way, but the company has confirmed that it’s working on gapless playback. There’s no estimated time of arrival for that feature.
