You could say that the advent of the MP3 format as well as Apple’s slick marketing (coupled with decent hardware, of course) of the iPod certainly fueled the boom of digital music, while signaling the death knell for the cassette Walkman and eventually, CD-toting Discman. Microsoft must have seen Apple’s iTunes and Amazon’s Cloud Player to be a viable business to be in, hence they have announced a potential heavyweight in the department, calling their service the Xbox Music which will be available for their Xbox consoles from tomorrow onwards.
The Xbox Music service will be expanded to Windows-powered computers and tablets in due time, including the Windows 8 and Windows RT versions of the upcoming Surface tablet when October 26th rolls around to coincide with the Windows 8 operating system launch. Not only that, smartphones (definitely the ones running on Windows Phone 8) will also be getting the Xbox Music service as well. With Xbox users spending up to 60% of their time on entertainment services on the Xbox 360 console, Microsoft figured out that this is a good time to enter the fray with Xbox Music, which will continue where the ill-fated Zune service failed to take off. Microsoft will make Xbox Music available in 22 countries first, and hopes to deliver the service to iOS and Android-powered devices from 2013 onwards. [Press Release]
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