Microsoft announced today that Xbox Music is now capable of playing music that users have stored in OneDrive. Users will be able to access their personal music collection across all of their Windows devices with the Xbox Music app and that too for no charge at all. OneDrive now has a new “Music” folder where users can upload their music files which will automatically appear in Xbox Music apps for Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1.
That’s not all. Xbox Music apps on the Xbox 360 and the Xbox One can also be used to access music stored in OneDrive. Users will even be able to listen to their music through OneDrive on the web as well. “No Xbox Music Pass required.”
Those who do have the Xbox Music Pass will get an extra 100GB of storage on OneDrive for free, more than ample storage to store a large music collection.
This feature isn’t that different with what Apple allows iTunes Match subscribers to do or what Google provides with Play Music. These services run everything on a single cloud service whereas Microsoft is using OneDrive for storing music files and Xbox Music for allowing users to stream them anywhere they like. Not that’s one is better than the other, it’s just a different approach.
Windows Phone users who don’t have an Xbox Live account, or have never used the Xbox Live service before, may need to sign up for an Xbox Live account first before they can take advantage of this.
Filed in . Read more about Microsoft, Onedrive and Xbox Music. Source: blogs.windows