XBox Music

Some time ago, Spotify offered a free 6 month (it may have been three, my memory fails me a little) trial of their "Premium" service. I had never been interested before for two main reasons, firstly I'm from an age where I own thousands of CDs and Records (yes, vinyl), so I like to keep stuff after I've paid for it. Secondly, I listen to music mainly through my mobile these days. The long sessions of listening to music in the evenings of years gone by have been largely replaced with other media (video or games). My music primarily takes place when I'm travelling or working (which still accounts for many hours in an average day).

With all this in mind the ability to play music on my mobile appealed, so I signed up for the trial. I did use this a few times, but due to having a lot going on at that time, not as much as I expected.

Then after one month, my free trial finished.

WTF?

The upshot was that I didn't have enough time to see the benefits, and I was a little upset by the premature expiration. No sale Spotify.

I went back to buying CDs, and the occasional MP3.

However, being a Windows Phone user, I'd always been vaguely intrigued by the concept of the Zune Music Pass, but not enough to actually do anything about it.

Recent talk by Paul Thurrott on Windows Weekly and the Win Super Site reminded me of this service recently however. To cut a long story a bit shorter, I mentioned the Zume music service to a work friend (who also has a Windows Phone), and as an ex-user of the service before having a Windows Phone, he re-signed that night. The following morning he showed me the service working on his mobile, and I'm interested enough to have now signed up to the 14 day trial.

We'll see how it goes, so far I'm impressed how slick it all is... although as I already mentioned it's hard for an old git like me to grasp the concept of not physically own things (despite being an occasional user of Love Film Instant).

I may well end up getting the monthly subscription until Windows 8 (and the built in integrated music apps) become my primary OS, by which time I would have either lost interest or will decide to go for the yearly subscription. I wonder what it will be called by then?

Of course, this may also have a small effect on my thoughts of the announced Lumia 920 not having an SD card... to a minor extent (although I'm still not impressed by that decision).

Looks like I'm in real danger of being fully sucked into the Microsoft ecosystem.... but at least I'm doing this knowingly and with the knowledge that alternatives are available, and trust me when I say that Microsoft must continue to deliver the goods to keep me sucking at the teat.

Oh, and unlike Spotify, Zune doesn't seem to broadcast everything I listen to, to all my "friends" on Facebook.

Any downsides? Well, the only one so far is possibly the 3 device download limit, although thinking more about this it should be enough with the addition of unlimited web streaming. Initially I thought about downloading to my home PC, but why bother when it's always connected? If any other down sides pop-up(?!!) I'll let you know.

Shame the downloads "to purchase and keep" are so damn expensive though.