Odd Artist Playcounts

Bring back the BBQ! / / (Brown 30, Nov. '06 | Black 80, Nov '07) ZuneThoughts.com

This is something that I ran into myself and then happened to stumble on the answer on guess where?  The Zune site.  What you are reporting here is expected behavior, maybe not what you would expect, but it is noted on the Zune forums FAQ.  Which I found by just clicking on the plays link on your Zune card page.

From the following link:

http://forums.zune.net/30/ShowPost.aspx

"Playing most songs within your collection will result in a play being uploaded to your recently played list, but there will be some songs that do not. We have worked hard to extend coverage beyond what is currently available in the Zune Marketplace and are committed to expanding the coverage further in the future.

Update: Playcount totals within your profile's most-played artist list only reflect plays recorded within the past 28 days.  Note that this will also affect your placement on top listener lists.  Top listener lists only take into account plays recorded within the past 28 days."

My situation is even odder.  I know about the 28 day thing, but mine says that I have played PM dawn like 40 times.  I only have 2 of their songs and there is no way I have heard a PM dawn song 40 times while I have over 300 Jimmy Buffett songs and 23 gigs of music. 

Strange

Stolly

Jimmy Buffett Rules!

ok, check that.  I just went to my profile and the count is down to 17, still odd when they are 2 songs out of 3000+

Stolly

Jimmy Buffett Rules!

Bring back the BBQ! / / (Brown 30, Nov. '06 | Black 80, Nov '07) ZuneThoughts.com

There appears to be a lot of things that can make songs not count right.  Do be sure to read this post:  http://forums.zune.net/30/ShowPost.aspx.  I have found a lot of my plays don't count because the album info is either not in or not correctly in the AMG.  I also seem to be gathering a lot of anecdotal evidence that when I play songs on the zune device and sync over to the software, it does not always count these plays (though sometimes it does).  I haven't gotten a definitive idea of how or when these plays do count or why they do not sometimes.  Someone from the Zune team who knows the technology might be better equipped to explain this but I haven't seen anything posted as of yet.

Getting this out of Beta may not "fix" it, as the issue may be a combination of discrepancies between the device, the software, the Social and the AMG.  I do hope they get some of it worked out, though.

It seems to me that to get it to read more plays from the device, you should do a complete shut down of the device before connecting, not just sleep mode.  It may have been coincidence, but it seems to show up more often when I do this.

Stolly

Jimmy Buffett Rules!