Microsoft has unveiled its “all-in-one” music service, Xbox Music, that it hopes will rival the likes of already established players Spotify, Amazon and iTunes.
As of today, the service is available on Xbox 360 and will become available on Windows 8 only when Microsoft’s latest operating system is launched next week, on October 26. No Windows 7 users allowed.
Microsoft has tried to distinguish itself from those already providing similar services, describing Xbox Music as a “one-stop-shop”, allowing users to discover and stream music but also to purchase and download individual tracks.
Similar to iTunes Match, Xbox Music users can incorporate their existing personal music collection and make it available to stream across devices.
Scott Porter, program manager for Microsoft’s Xbox Music, stated,
“I think what we’ve seen over the past several years is that discovering, managing and consuming music has gotten to be hard work.
“Our aspirations for Xbox Music are big – to address the multiple ways that people are listening to music, then put those all in one easy-to-use and beautifully curated place.”
Xbox Music will become the default music player on Windows 8 and will allow free, ad-supported streaming of 30 million tracks on desktop and tablet. Xbox users will need to purchase an Xbox Music Pass for $9.99 a month, in addition to any Xbox Live subscription they might have.
Xbox Music won’t be completely tied-in to the Microsoft ecosystem either. Xbox Music Android and iOS apps will becomes available “eventually”.
You can never write Microsoft off and 2013 could be a great year for them! The Bingiton campaign certainly has received a lot of screen time and it even features on the front of Microsoft.com. It’ll be interesting to see what Win 8 does between now and January.
They’ve probably never had as many fronts to do battle: CRM, Cloud, Search, Browser, OS, Hosting, SQL Database, Office.
I don’t think Google Apps is fully featured enough to be considered a full competitor to Microsoft Office / Outlook and Exchange but it certainly is a good e-mail platform. But Office is still very, very easy to use. Linux may have gained a giant market share but it may also just have created a larger non-pirate market.
But Microsoft have definitely been fighting a losing war on the phone and tablet front, as well as the browser and search – where its clear that Apple and Google are far superior….