Xbox Music comes to Android, iOS and free streaming on the web

Microsoft must have been listening to our podcast a few ago when we were discussing Xbox Music and how they should go all in with the service. Last night Microsoft announced that its launching new Xbox Music iOS and Android apps as well as adding free streaming to the web player. The iOS and Android apps enable music streaming of your music collection to your mobile device and Microsoft are planning to add offline modes in the coming months.

Microsoft say the web version has free streaming which is unlimited for the first six months and then has limited number of hours with the paid version offering unlimited streaming. It’s good to see Microsoft investing in the Xbox Music platform, I recently subscribed to Google’s All Access music service which for £7.99 gives you unlimited streaming and I have really enjoyed discovering new music and having access on my Android devices. Currently Google don’t offer apps for platforms other than the browser and Android so Microsoft have a good chance or appealing to owners of multiple platforms. The Android app is available from the Google Play Store, when I tested the app I found you needed an Xbox Music pass to be able to use the Android app.

Today is a big day for Xbox Music: we’re releasing on iOS and Android and we’re also adding free streaming to our Web player, making Xbox Music and its 30 million tracks available on millions more devices and for free to anyone with a Web browser.

Xbox Music is coming up on its one-year anniversary and we’ve learned a lot in that time.  Xbox Music is now, more than ever, a service that spans across all kinds of devices—phones, tablets, PCs and TVs—and unites artists with their fans through one common platform.

We continue to make milestone achievements in our journey with Xbox Music, positioning us to solve several problems that exist today.  A lot of people use multiple music services to get the songs and albums they want.  Does this sound familiar?  You’re listening to Pandora and bookmark a song you love. Later, you open Spotify and use your subscription to listen to the song over and over again on repeat. And then you use iTunes or Amazon to purchase the song for your own collection that wasn’t available for streaming.  We’ve all been there.

As a fan of music, I don’t think enjoying the songs I love should be this complicated or disconnected.  To solve this problem, last year my team introduced Xbox Music, an all-in-one music service that gives you the independence to stream music for free, subscribe to all the music you want or download to own your favorite songs.  And it’s all integrated across your tablet, PC, phone and TV.

Since we launched, we’ve done a lot of work to continuously roll out new features and updates. We unveiled new features for Xbox Music on Windows 8, a redesign of the Xbox Music interface in Windows 8.1 and even the first version of a Web-based Xbox Music player earlier this summer. Today, we continue to deliver.

Xbox Music Available on iOS & Android. Xbox Music is now available on iOS and Android devices¹ worldwide, expanding the number of devices the service is available on.   And this is only the beginning. We’ll continue to improve the service on these platforms bringing offline mode to iOS and Android in the coming months.