Xbox Music Is Useless on Xbox
Options
Look to the future.
When Xbox Music -- goodbye, Zune Marketplace -- launches on your 360 on October 16, the ad-supported streaming service will debut globally with a song library of 30 million, 18 million of which will be available instantly for United States users on a free or subscription-based basis. The catch (of course there’s a catch!) is that Xbox Music is a fantastic application for a very specific kind of person.
Beyond the broad scope of “the music lover,” Xbox Music is built with the Microsoft fanatic in mind, someone committed to the idea of owning Windows 8, a Surface slate, and a Windows Phone. Ironically, no matter what the name implies, the person Xbox Music is engineered against is the Xbox 360 owner.
So, it’s October 16, you’re an Xbox owner, and you want Xbox Music’s free tunes. You love the idea of streaming Pixies, Black Keys, Boston, Bruce Springsteen, and obscure Canadian artists like Plumtree, Imaginary Cities, and Michael Bernard Fitzgerald. You happen to have impeccable taste, as it turns out. Here’s how it goes down:
You must be an Xbox Live Gold subscriber. From there, you can build playlists and stream all the Weezer and Lana Del Rey you please for 30 days, after which you’ll start paying the $9.95 fee to become a Pass member. To become a full-fledged Xbox Music user, you’ll need to pay $60 for Xbox Live Gold and another $120 for Music per year.
If you’re keeping score, that’s nearly $200 per year simply to have access to Xbox Music on your Xbox.
Ouch.
Windows 8 is the only platform on which you’ll be able to stream unlimited music for free – and for the time being, Microsoft says there’s no ceiling on the number of tracks you can listen to. Better still, you can skip as many junk tunes as you want. Take that, Spotify.
Microsoft isn’t buying much more goodwill with the majority of its audience, though, especially those who’d likely want to use Xbox Music most. Want to use SmartGlass? It won’t be available just yet. Surface? Also unavailable at launch. Oh, you’re an Android or iOS user? Sorry, support for those devices is coming “within a year.”
Even PC users need to wait for Windows 8’s launch on October 26 to take full advantage of the program. The only user who can use Xbox Music out of the gate is the one who gets the raw deal.
Of course, this is a short term problem. Look ahead six months or so. Assume Xbox Music is on your iPad and iPhone and Windows 8 has any launch kinks straightened out. You've adopted a new operating system or tablet and they can all talk to each other. The cloud is great for shooting tracks between devices. In the near future, Xbox Music will be excellent -- possibly outdoing its competition at every corner. It has the edge over competitors like Grooveshark, Pandora, and Spotify because it shares similar features (Smart DJ is your radio), plus it adds Vevo-powered music videos and Pass members can download albums for free. And if you’re streaming on your phone you shouldn't have any interruptions – progressive downloading stores the song without saving it to your device, allowing you to listen to tracks on your tunnel-filled commute even if you lose signal.
But will this be enough to create an audience out of built-in Xbox users as well as tear the Spotify- and Pandora-obsessed away from what’s working already? At launch, probably not. Looking ahead a year, though, and this could be the one and only music service we need.
Comments
-
I've been on Zune Marketplace Pass since 2009, it's a pretty good service. Great software too. They need to get it running on Android and iOS tho since they don't make Zunes no more and nobody really has WIndows mobile phone.
-
160 gig iPod, 11,921 songs, and a USB cable = Me saying ? Streaming Music Service.
-
cant you stream music with windows media center hookup? and how do you connect your ipod to your 360? ive tried but of course microsoft doesnt ? with apple software
-
Stupid ? 360 won't even take burned cds.
-
I have no idea what this ? is.160 gig iPod, 11,921 songs, and a USB cable = Me saying ? Streaming Music Service.
-
freehuey89 wrote: »cant you stream music with windows media center hookup? and how do you connect your ipod to your 360? ive tried but of course microsoft doesnt ? with apple software
Yeah WTF is up with this I had an 360 when it first came out you used to be able to play you Ipod but now it doesn't work. What's up?
-
It still works. Take the iPod charge cable, plug it in, hit the Media button on the controller, and select Music Player. The problem here is that it takes like five minutes to discover the iPod AFTER you start a game and try to start the music. If you do it from the home screen, your iPod appears in like 2 seconds or at least mine does.
Hope that helps somebody. -
Last.fm>>>>
-
paying for music on ANY console is a losss. . i just use a usb or ipod like previous users said.. or burn the disc to the hard drive
-
It still works. Take the iPod charge cable, plug it in, hit the Media button on the controller, and select Music Player. The problem here is that it takes like five minutes to discover the iPod AFTER you start a game and try to start the music. If you do it from the home screen, your iPod appears in like 2 seconds or at least mine does.
Hope that helps somebody.
Okay thanks I'll try this.
-
They get rid of last fm on xbox? who the ? pays for music these days anyway?
-
Lou Cypher wrote: »Lou Cypher wrote: »They get rid of last fm on xbox? who the ? pays for music these days anyway?
-
Listening through an external hard drive>>>