Microsoft's Xbox Music Service to Include Streaming, Downloads, and Cloud Storage?

[kiljoy616]

I'll stick with match as i don't own anything microsoft.

Would be nice to actually have information about it other than they plan to release something.

You must be new to MS this is normal for them making announcements a year or more before hand and then nothing is not that uncommon for MS. Still I doubt this is not for real but will hold judgement till they actually bring it out.

Oh MS you never cease to entertain me.

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Is it time to switch over to only reporting things that don't have cloud storage? It may be easier.

Well that going to get harder since everyone and their mother is going in that directions. Even Cisco is pushing it as personal cloud computing. No where to run from it.

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Ditto!
So much tech news these days is companies just unveiling vague things. They're not releasing new products, they're not selling anything to the public, they're just feeding the tech media a line about "Look at this toy we've made that might be a product some day. Feel free to blog about it with months of speculation so we get some free advertising in the lead up to whenever we decide to sell something or not."
This is what we got with Google Glass, with Microsoft Surface (the one from a few weeks ago AND the table-top computer from 2007), with Nintendo's Wii U, and even with Apple and their slow releases of "previews" of Lion and Mountain Lion.
I remember the Microsoft releasing their first video of the Kinect in mid 2009 with Peter Molyneux saying explicitly, "And this technology works now. Today." And then they didn't actually release the thing until some time late 2010, and it worked almost nothing like promised with all the facial recognition and the taking pictures of your skateboard and being able to interact emotionally with a character on screen.
Call me cynical, but after being jerked around by so many teasers of great things to come and so much speculation to gush over and so little information on tech specs, pricing, availability, compatibility, or even release dates, I can't help but take "news" like this with a grain of salt.

Will call you "cynical" but also "realist" because you are so right every count.

 

[Renzatic]

You must be new to MS this is normal for them making announcements a year or more before hand and then nothing is not that uncommon for MS. Still I doubt this is not for real but will hold judgement till they actually bring it out.

Oh MS you never cease to entertain me.

I just logged into it not even 3 minutes ago. From the looks of it, this is an extension to the Windows 8 music marketplace, which is an update to the been out since forever now Zune Marketplace.

 

[VenusianSky]

So many Clouds out there are darkening my day.

I can't see the Sun anymore...

Actually, there is only one cloud. It use to be called the Internet.

So is it fair to say we are looking at:
3. Microsoft Ecosystem?

You mean the Microsoft ecosystem that has been running businesses for over ten years, or that consumer stuff that rotates like a merry-go-round?

 

[SBlue1]

Now that sounds interesting.

 

[Amazing Iceman]

Actually, there is only one cloud. It use to be called the Internet.

As you said: It used to be...
So the question now is: What the heck happened?

The term Cloud is being used everywhere. You'll hear of Corporate Cloud, Personal Cloud, Remote Cloud, iCloud, IBM Cloud, Ingram Micro Cloud Services, etc...
What's going on???

 

[whooleytoo]

As you said: It used to be...
So the question now is: What the heck happened?

The term Cloud is being used everywhere. You'll hear of Corporate Cloud, Personal Cloud, Remote Cloud, iCloud, IBM Cloud, Ingram Micro Cloud Services, etc...
What's going on???

It's just the latest buzz word for a concept that's been around for quite some time. Once the business/marketing folk got their hands on it, everything suddenly was all about being "in/on the cloud". In a year's time most of us will be taking cloud storage for granted, and there'll be a new buzz phrase/technology..

 

[Major.Robto]

I doubt this will even come to canada.

Knowing us canadiens are left out of the american fun all the time... Microsoft is bad with us at times,

I know I had a live outage for a week and it was only canadiens reporting the problem.

Be nice if microsfot does snyc and stuff like apple does. Would make them go higher in the world if you ask me.

 

[Sackvillenb]

If implemented well, this could be good. That being said, I doubt I would buy much form them... but, I do really like my 360, and having more functionality in it will be great.

 

[Howardchief]

Anyone know what kind of tv that is in the picture?

 

[KevinN206]

You must be new to MS this is normal for them making announcements a year or more before hand and then nothing is not that uncommon for MS. Still I doubt this is not for real but will hold judgement till they actually bring it out.

Oh MS you never cease to entertain me.

They announced the rebrand of Zune Music to Xbox Music along with the launch of Xbox SmartGlass for the launch of Windows 8 of THIS year. It's expected that Windows 8 would be available in October for the holiday season.

THIS story was NOT something Microsoft announced. If you read the article, some unidentified sources LEAKED this information. Now, you could be saying that someone from Microsoft did, but what about all the rumors and leaks from Apple? Likewise, how do these annoucements differ for Apple's annoucement for iOS 6 in Fall of this year?

Microsoft has a lot of things launching by the end of this year:

Windows 8 PC
Windows 8 tablet
Windows Phone 8
Xbox SmartGlass
Xbox Music with 30 million songs

These products don't even include enterprise and development software.

 

[smoledman]

So the consensus is that Microsoft is late to the party on just about everything, therefore they should just give up? Even some diehard MS haters admit that Microsoft can be in business forever just doing enterprise stuff.

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They announced the rebrand of Zune Music to Xbox Music along with the launch of Xbox SmartGlass for the launch of Windows 8 of THIS year. It's expected that Windows 8 would be available in October for the holiday season.

THIS story was NOT something Microsoft announced. If you read the article, some unidentified sources LEAKED this information. Now, you could be saying that someone from Microsoft did, but what about all the rumors and leaks from Apple? Likewise, how do these annoucements differ for Apple's annoucement for iOS 6 in Fall of this year?

Microsoft has a lot of things launching by the end of this year:

Windows 8 PC
Windows 8 tablet
Windows Phone 8
Xbox SmartGlass
Xbox Music with 30 million songs

These products don't even include enterprise and development software.

C#/.NET >>>>> Objective-C/Cocoa. The only thing going for Apple is the fact that there is more money to be made right now in iOS apps.

 

[Dionte]

Is eMusic.com available in the US? While they lack a lot of big-name artists, they're a lot cheaper than that. I'm paying 36c per track.

(That said, you can't just buy just 1 song from them. You have to to buy a monthly package and if you don't use the downloads, you lose them. Still, you can cancel after you've downloaded your month's worth).

Thanks, it says you gets a $20 credit for signing up and most artist songs I buy are around 79 cents. #winning

 

[whooleytoo]

Thanks, it says you gets a $20 credit for signing up and most artist songs I buy are around 79 cents. #winning

Nice. I'm on a grandfathered plan, which is why I'm getting songs for 36c (Euro), but 79c sounds almost pricey. I guess it depends on which monthly option you go for.

FYI, there is one down-side to eMusic relative to iTunes and others. If you buy albums with lots of tracks (say, 50+), most stores will give you an album price of 10-15 euros, whereas eMusic still charges per-track, which could be up to 10 times the album price. If I find one I want, I cancel my eMusic subscription, buy it much cheaper on iTunes or alternative, and then re-sign up on eMusic the following month (they let me re-start my grandfathered plan).

 

[Dionte]

Nice. I'm on a grandfathered plan, which is why I'm getting songs for 36c (Euro), but 79c sounds almost pricey. I guess it depends on which monthly option you go for.

FYI, there is one down-side to eMusic relative to iTunes and others. If you buy albums with lots of tracks (say, 50+), most stores will give you an album price of 10-15 euros, whereas eMusic still charges per-track, which could be up to 10 times the album price. If I find one I want, I cancel my eMusic subscription, buy it much cheaper on iTunes or alternative, and then re-sign up on eMusic the following month (they let me re-start my grandfathered plan).

I rarely buy albums anymore unless amazon is having one of those $5 sales.

 

[noty]

I really wish Apple would offer an iTunes subscription service. I love Spotify but I also miss Siri support when playing music in my car (when it works).

 

[divinox]

You forgot Amazon ecosystem.


I think this the short reality, and the fact is people don't use the iTunes ecosystem b/c it's Apple. They use it b/c they use Apple products. And the longer they use Apple products, and buy from the iTunes ecosystem it makes it that much harder to move to another platform, even if the others make less expensive h/w or have one or two better features. At this point a "me too" product won't cut it. It's going to take either something revolutionary or a colossal Apple stumble.

I suspect all of these formats will survive but they'll never de-throne Apple at this rate.

You are missing the obvious part that MSFT doesn't need to take a single user from Apple, but only retain the ones they already have - which last time i checked were quite a few. Also, i have yet to see any hard numbers suggesting that ecosystem buy-ins for the average user are worth mentioning in dollars.

 

[Chupa Chupa]

You are missing the obvious part that MSFT doesn't need to take a single user from Apple, but only retain the ones they already have - which last time i checked were quite a few. Also, i have yet to see any hard numbers suggesting that ecosystem buy-ins for the average user are worth mentioning in dollars.

XBOX customers are dwarfed by iOS customers. MSFT, like any company, strives to grow it's business, not maintain it. I wouldn't be so bold to lump Win customers into the same bucket as XBOX customers. It's already been proven w/ MSFT's previous offerings that Win customers are not loyal to Win or MSFT. If that were not the case the iPod wouldn't have made a significant and import ant sales boom when Apple opened up iPod to Win. That was the true start of the iOS revolution.

 

[divinox]

XBOX customers are dwarfed by iOS customers. MSFT, like any company, strives to grow it's business, not maintain it. I wouldn't be so bold to lump Win customers into the same bucket as XBOX customers. It's already been proven w/ MSFT's previous offerings that Win customers are not loyal to Win or MSFT. If that were not the case the iPod wouldn't have made a significant and import ant sales boom when Apple opened up iPod to Win. That was the true start of the iOS revolution.

Way to compare two different markets. AppleTV customers are dwarfed by Xbox customers. What now? Second, certainly MSFT wants to grow their business, but its hard to grow your business when you have 90% of the market. Further, if tablets take off, and MSFT manages to hold their position, how is that not growing? Once again, they do not need to take a single customer from Apple, they just need to retain the ones they have. The issue for MSFT isn't the number of customers they have, but the money they are able to get from them - which in turn is linked to the number of products each has, and the frequency within which these are replaced.

Further, even if we buy your premiss that MSFT customers aren't loyal, what is the relevance? What i said was that MSFT only needs to retain their customers. If they retain them through loyalty, through superior offerings, or through cakes, doesn't matter as far as the argument goes.

 

[EbookReader]

X-Box is looking to get in on some of this

Spotify Revenue:

2008: $0.612 million USD
2009: $18.1 million USD
2010: $99 million USD
2011: $236.4 million USD
2012: projected at $889 million USD


AMAZING GROWTH.....

 

[DougB541]

I guarantee you if I walked on the street and polled people about what they thought an XBox was, half of them would not know ("is that like a PlayStation?"). The other half would not associate the brand with Microsoft.

Microsoft's problem is that they can't just create brands randomly. That's a recipe for failure. Look at Kin for evidence of that.

I actually think they were on the right track with the "Live" sub-branding. Windows Live, Xbox Live, Hotmail Live, etc. That way they keep their existing mantras but open the door for Live Video, Live Music, etc. Too bad they ended up dropping it.

You do know xbox is outselling Playstation here in the good ol' US of A right?

Xbox is not this unknown brand anymore.

 

[Bubba Satori]

So is it fair to say we are looking at:

1. Apple Ecosystem
2. Google Ecosystem
3. Microsoft Ecosystem?

Yes, but you forgot Amazon.

And in 5 years consolidation.