[Q] Music + Videos Live Tile not loading extra artist content

[Rcon]

I've noticed that when playing music in WP7 Zune player, artist details, pictures & bios are not being loaded. All I get now is a black background.

I'm not sure if this is all related to Country Code or not, but this is my experience:

When I first got my Rogers Samsung Focus, I initially used a Windows Live account with a country code of USA. Under this account, Zune for WP7 worked as expected. It grabbed all the artist pics, bios etc from the Zune.net.

Due to a Windows Live Contacts issue, I decided to hard reset my Focus & use a Canadian Windows Live account. Since then, I've noticed that Zune for WP7 does not load any of the artist pics, bios etc from Zune.net.

Has this happened to anybody else on any WP7 phones?

[Rcon]

UPDATE

I've managed to get the WP7 Zune to display all the extra artist details. From what I can tell, this functionality is dependent on your country code. What I'm clear on are the bare minimum settings that are required to get this to work.

For me, I factory reset my Focus. After the reset, I added a primary Windows Live account with a United States country code. At this point, I loaded some music but Zune wasn't pulling any artist info yet. I'm not sure if Zune just needed time to download the info or not. I didn't wait very long for the next step so this could be the only requirement to get this working. The 2nd country code change I made was in the Marketplace & it prompted me to choose a country. Canada was the default value but I changed it to USA. Even after this change, it took a few minutes before I started to see artist info. If everything is configured correctly, you should see the option to buy music in the Marketplace which I don't think Canadian accounts see.

At any rate, I hope this helps.

Cheers.

[St. Jimmy]

This is kind of a pain. Why can't Canadian customers see extra artist content??

I have an existing live account with a Canadian country code. I guess I'll have to change this prior to associating it with a Windows Phone?

[Rcon]

That's the bad news. Once you've set your country code on any Windows Live account [including Zune & Xbox Live], you can't change it. Period. Don't get me started.

As a workaround, I created an "empty" USA Windows Live account [meaning, no contacts, emails or calender items] & made that my main WP7 account. I then added my real Canadian Windows Live account as an additional email account that automagically imported all my contacts, emails etc.

Hope this helps.

[Tredell]

That's the bad news. Once you've set your country code on any Windows Live account [including Zune & Xbox Live], you can't change it. Period. Don't get me started.

As a workaround, I created an "empty" USA Windows Live account [meaning, no contacts, emails or calender items] & made that my main WP7 account. I then added my real Canadian Windows Live account as an additional email account that automagically imported all my contacts, emails etc.

Hope this helps.

Are you sure you cannot change it? I just changed my live account from Canada to United States in the Account Settings for my live account. I didnt get any errors and it seemed to save fine.

I should mention that I do not have a WP7 phone yet so I dont know if this action will cause me problems down the road.


Tredell

[Dermot]

Are you sure you cannot change it? I just changed my live account from Canada to United States in the Account Settings for my live account. I didnt get any errors and it seemed to save fine.

Tredell

I had a Hotmail account that was later associated with a Canadian credit card for XBox.

I couldn't change it and discovered it was impossible. It is hard coded.

If you haven't associated your live account with a credit card for XBox or Microsoft Billing then you MAY be able to change it. I wouldn't know....it was too late for me ....save yourself : )

Migration of the account is not possible either.

I just used my Live account and made it appear as a US account.

[Dermot]

That's the bad news. Once you've set your country code on any Windows Live account [including Zune & Xbox Live], you can't change it. Period. Don't get me started.

As a workaround, I created an "empty" USA Windows Live account [meaning, no contacts, emails or calender items] & made that my main WP7 account. I then added my real Canadian Windows Live account as an additional email account that automagically imported all my contacts, emails etc.

Hope this helps.

I did exactly the same thing.

I also went one step further as I have a mailbox in the US.
I added the US address to my credit card and get all the Zune artist data on the phone and I can download music and apps now.

Videos I can't downlaod due to IP blocking.

[Tredell]

I had a Hotmail account that was later associated with a Canadian credit card for XBox.

I couldn't change it and discovered it was impossible. It is hard coded.

If you haven't associated your live account with a credit card for XBox or Microsoft Billing then you MAY be able to change it. I wouldn't know....it was too late for me ....save yourself : )

Migration of the account is not possible either.

I just used my Live account and made it appear as a US account.

Interesting... I wonder if mine worked cause I did the following steps:

• Migrated my Live account from a Canadian based one (was using gmail address as my live login)
• Changed my Live account to be US based (havent associated a credit card with it yet)
• migrated my Xbox Live account to use the new live.com I that I created (this does have a credit card associated to it and I can see previous purchases under my new Live ID now).

I'll probrobably get a Windows phone within the next few weeks so I'll let you guys know if it lets me access the US Zune Marketplace features


-Tredell

[Dermot]

Can you qualify "Migrated".
There is a migration processs for XBox accounts but the countries they allow migration from are a couple in South America and some bizarre Euro-Russian ones that I can't even pronounce.

I assume you just changed the information settings to US in your Live account?

If you try to set up a credit card then you will find out for sure. You need to anyway to purchase stuff unless you just buy a Zune points card. With points you can only buy music...no apps unless you get the credit card acssociated with the Live account.