The all new digital music service from Microsoft Corp., the Xbox Music is ready and set to take on the Cloud Player of the Amazon.com Inc. and iTunes from Apple Inc. for music on Xbox game consoles.

The Report:

According to the reports released on the 15th of October, Microsoft Corp. has made the announcement of its most advanced service in the field of music that is the Microsoft Xbox Music. This service will be made available to the tablets and the computers that are based on Windows software. In addition, this digital music service from Microsoft Corp. will be incorporated in the soon to release Surface tablet from and the latest Windows 8 operating system from Microsoft Corp. as well. This digital music service from Microsoft Corp. is then to be included in the phones shortly. The Microsoft Xbox Music will provide access to nearly 30 million songs out of a global catalogue as compared to only 26 million from the iTunes library. There is no official limitation posed by Microsoft Corp. on the amount of music on Xbox game consoles even though that can be changed over the due course of time.

Efforts from Microsoft Corp:

There have been efforts from the largest software making company in the world since long to convert the living room into a hub of entertainment with the Microsoft Xbox Music. Since the year 2005 more than almost 67 million units of this product has been sold. It was nearly a year and a half ago that Microsoft Corp. realized that among the Microsoft Xbox Music users more than half spent their time listening to the music on Xbox game consoles than playing games. This fact was brought to light by the Jerry Johnson who is the general manager of the Microsoft Xbox Music. The leading video game console of the market is already into streaming popular channels like ESPN, Netflix and others apart from advancing its services with both audio and video contents.

The Microsoft Xbox Music Service:

According to Johnson, the company realizes the fact that music is a major source of entertainment not only on its own but also as part of the various user experiences. The Microsoft Xbox Music comes as a replacement for the digital media brand of the company called Zune that struggled to make a mark for itself with the strong challenge posed by the iTunes from Apple Inc. Microsoft Corp. is also set to provide a free service for ad-supported streaming of music apart from a premium subscription of $9.99 which will provide unlimited streaming of ad free music. The digital music service from Microsoft Corp. will carry more than 70 thousand music videos that will be made available on the Xbox console. Additional and advanced features like cloud storage is also available in the Microsoft Xbox Music along with a specialized artist based radio function similar to the music streaming services of Spotify and Pandora. The Microsoft Xbox Music services will be made available to as many as 22 countries all over the world with raising hopes of Microsoft Corp. to take on the services of the Google Inc.'s Android and Apple Inc.'s iOS sometime around next year.

Industry Leaders Magazine