Microsoft has rebranded its Xbox Music app as ‘Groove Music’, promising a catalogue of over 40m tracks and ‘music for everything you do’.
As you can tell, the platform has been distanced itself from MS’s video gaming brand as part of a new Windows 10 update.
The same is true for Xbox Video has also been renamed to Movies & TV, moves which MS says will “make content… more identifiable for our broad customer base”.
If that sounds like an Apple Music-style bid for the mainstream, there’s more that will remind you of the Cupertino firm’s service: Microsoft is allowing users of its Cloud locker service OneDrive to add their MP3s and iTunes tracks to a mixed library, along with streaming songs from Groove.
Groove will cost $9.99 in the US, or $99 per year.
The change to the platform will launch first on Windows 10 PCs before rolling out to other Microsoft devices over the coming months.
Other key features of Groove include the ability to ‘make and find playlists for any occasion, from romantic dinners to epic road trips’; ‘discover new music with radio — custom stations based on artists you love’; ‘stream songs when you’re not online’; and ‘enjoy one of the largest catalogs on the planet – over 40 million songs’.
Microsoft promises users they can ‘play what you want, when you want it, ad-free’ – but for that they’ll need to cough up. There’s no freemium tier.Music Business Worldwide
