Xbox Music Saves People from Playing Games in Silence

We know. When you see streaming, your eyes scan to the right of the screen expecting to see green or blue… which you are trained to understand means either Spotify or Rdio. This time however, you can expect a sleek grey visually stimulating streaming service that doesn’t start with an S or an R. We’ll give you a hint… it’s no longer pink and you are probably already playing video games on it.

Xbox Music will start breaking onto the scene today on Xbox 360 consoles, and October 26th on tablets and PCs. Mobile phones will have to wait until October 29. No longer toting the name Zune or the bright desktop app, this sleek updated service loses the spreadsheet look and will be available to a pretty massive audience.

Below are some of the reasons Xbox Music could surpass expectations we have for a new service moving into a saturated market:

• A free, ad-supported version of Xbox Music will come with every Windows 8 desktop and laptop… every time a Windows 8 owner (fill in massive number of people here) opens an MP3, Xbox Music will fulfill that request. Oh, and there are 18 million other tracks available here as well.

• Forty MILLION people already have Xbox Live accounts and Xbox Music is launching its free service in 15 countries and its paid service in 22 countries. These people can use the credit cards they already have on file. That’s a lot of people. I’ll let you do the math.

• Microsoft is BIG and can afford to support a free music service as a loss-leader.

• The same ad sales team selling ad space for Bing will sell ad space for Xbox Music’s ad supported version. You might say they have some experience.

• People already use an Xbox for more than games — something like half of Xbox usage is for non- gaming. Again, take out your calculators — time for more math.

• Coming to your iOS/Android phone soon.

• You get just about everything you could possibly need with this service — radio (although not free on your mobile just yet), on-demand streaming, à la carte track downloads, a visually stimulating interface (no more spreadsheets!), a cloud, and a free pony. Ok, maybe you don’t get a pony, but you get a cloud and all that other stuff; let’s not be greedy.

Check out this video to get a peek at the platform and click here for the full press release.