Xbox Music Looks to Bring Free Streaming Music to Consoles

A post on the Verge today reports that Microsoft is aiming to launch Xbox Music on October 26 to coincide with the release of their new OS, Windows 8. The service, says the post, will offer up music streaming in a similar fashion to Spotify, with a subscription model like the Zune Music Pass, and ad-supported free streaming as well. The service will run on Windows 8, Windows Phone, and, of course, Xbox 360s.

Sounds good to me. I’ve never been much of a fan of the subpar performance of the Last.fm app on the Xbox dash board. It always seemed like an inferior version of Pandora to me. If Xbox Music can truly do what Spotify does for consoles, we may have a worthy contender in the I-don’t-want-to-pay-much-or-really-anything-for-music race.

Of course, it should be noted that we don’t have much in the way of anything official from Microsoft about the plans for the service, aside from some vague description on Microsoft’s website. At this point, the Verge’s reports are culled from “multiple sources.” I’m not saying they’re wrong, but it almost sounds a little too good. I’l believe all of this when I see it. Or, in this case, hear it.

Via the Verge