Xbox Music

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Not exactly a glowing outlook. A lot can happen in a year.



  • http://twitter.com/shycophante Shyco Phante

    Windows Music Store PlaysForSure Zune Music Xbox Music

    Fourth time lucky, 10 years later. I’m a believer.

    • http://www.tumblr.com/blog/his-divine-shadow His Shadow

      It’s always nice to see the laundry lists of previous names for Microsoft’s services. For one, I forget sometimes just how many times they’ve tried to rebrand failures.For another, it’s a reminder of how those previous services, now discontinued or renamed, were trotted out with the same rhetoric to the same sycophantic appraisals.

      The same people that are seemingly incapable of restraining themselves from using 90s era cult tropes regarding Apple are also incapable of remembering anything about Microsoft they didn’t get from Microsoft’s PR department.

  • studuncan

    Also, useless on Windows 7, Windows Phone 7, Windows XP.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Sebastian-Paul/1186812355 Sebastian Paul

    Is the statement that a lot can happen in a year (in the streaming music market) a thinly disguised ‘yep’ for a streaming music service by Apple, making Spotify and Xbox Music unnecessary for Apple users?

    • BC2009

      My take exactly (see above). The October event is usually Apple’s music/iTunes event. This makes me wonder if Apple is unveiling “iTunes Radio” at the event on the 23rd.

      • http://www.facebook.com/people/Sebastian-Paul/1186812355 Sebastian Paul

        And we will see a major revamp of iTunes in “October” o.O

        “iTunes Radio” would definitely be a feature that would be added with a major update of iTunes and would greatly benefit from the new mini player.

        Yes, i guess the introduction or at least announcement of “iTunes Radio” with the release of iTunes 11 seems possible and more plausible than adding it in spring 2013 in an iTunes 11.2 or 11.3 update.

        Now I just hope that it will get released in Europe/Germany,too – and soon! – iTunes Match was released 2 Months after US, Videos In The Cloud are still not available (in Germany, seems the rest of the world already has this feature :/ )

  • BC2009

    A lot can happen in a year…. Like Apple coming out with an “iTunes Radio” service that is available on iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV free of charge with advertising support.

    Being first only matters if you get it right out of the gate. Microsoft may be the first of the major software companies to jump on the streaming internet radio bandwagon, but they have not gotten it right. Other examples of folks being first, but not getting it right:

    1) First to LTE only mattered if there was significant LTE coverage and decent battery life (both were not the case) for every LTE early entrant.

    2) First to NFC payments only matters if you can actually use it for secure payments in almost all places you shop. Passbook is already a hit with many places who only need barcode readers to support it.

    Samsung’s new commercial teases “we’re gonna get that next year, right?”, but oddly enough, striking at the opportune moment is everything. Next year may very well be when said feature is relevant. Some features (like knocking your phones together to share a playlist) will never be relevant. Google touts “Google Bean”, but “beaming” your business card or an app to somebody over IR with your Palm Pilot was never relevant and even less so today with the proliferation of messaging, email, and Facebook as a means of sharing.

    You gotta get it right in order to be relevant. My guess is that Jim is hinting that by the time Microsoft gets this right they will no longer be relevant since Apple will be the first to get this right. Certainly, Apple’s Ping was never relevant — maybe their entry into streaming radio will be executed much better.

  • @ChristoDeluxe

    I’m not sure who the Xbox component of this is for, even if they use the Xbox brand in the name. I love my Xbox and consider it one of Microsoft’s best products ever, but I would never use it for music, because it’s hooked up to my TV.

    It’s not suited to being used as an audio device in a stereo component system, and it has no useful controls for when it’s not displaying on a TV.

    I never once used the Zune store on there, not sure who’s gonna shell out that kind of cash to stream music onto a TV.