We can officially put Zune to rest. Today Microsoft has announced what everyone saw coming: Xbox Music. The service is largely built upon Zune, but with some new features and options.
Xbox Music makes its debut tomorrow alongside a new dashboard update for the Xbox 360. The service will eventually make its way to Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. Xbox Music lives in the cloud so that users will easily be able to access their library across devices. Users will have three different ways to use Xbox Music. For free you can listen to a Pandora-like ad supported stream, for $9.99 a month you you get unlimited play, and users can also pay per song and album. Current subscribers of Zune Pass can sign right up tomorrow.
In addition to the audio offerings Xbox Music also has over 70,000 music videos. The free music streaming will be available for Windows 8 only, the Xbox Music Pass will be available for all three platforms (Xbox, W8, WP8), and the music store will be available for WP8 and W8. Windows 7 and Windows Phone 7 users will not get access to the new Xbox Music service.
Who is looking forward to using this service?
[via Windows Blog]