More in Xbox Music

Last week, I posted a very early version of the “Music, Videos, and Podcasts” chapter for Windows Phone Book, noting that it would soon change quite a bit. And it has, for reasons both anticipated and unexpected....More

This week’s update to Xbox Music Book almost (but not quite) finishes the section on Xbox Music for Xbox 360, and has a number of updates to the Windows 8/RT section as well....More

Here’s another interim update to the Xbox Music Book. This version includes more content in the section about the Music app in Windows 8/RT....More

Here’s a quick interim release of the Xbox Music Book, which includes some new content about the Music app for Windows 8/RT and a ton of new content about Xbox Music on Xbox 360....More

Here’s a second release of the in-progress Xbox Music Book plus some thoughts about the much-maligned music match functionality in Microsoft’s new cloud-based music service....More

Xbox Music Pass is a monthly subscription service that lets you stream much of the music in Microsoft’s voluminous online music catalog with your Windows 8/RT PC or device, Windows Phone 8 handset, or Xbox 360. And on Windows 8/RT and Windows Phone 8, you can also download music from the service to your devices for offline use....More

While a scan-and-match feature will be added to Xbox Music in the coming year, the Xbox Music app for Windows 8 already includes a feature that lets you manually add music from your PC to your personal Xbox Music cloud collection. This feature, which I call album match, makes matched music available for streaming or downloading on your other Windows 8 devices and Windows Phone 8 handsets....More

In the buildup to my free mini-book about Xbox Music, I thought it might make sense to step through the various features that make up this all-in-one digital music service. First up, the free streaming capability that is available only on Windows 8....More

Following in the footsteps of Apple and Amazon, Google has added a music matching service to Google Play Music for customers in the US, a few weeks after the service debuted in Europe. But this matching service has one big advantage over iTunes Match and Amazon Cloud Player Premium: It’s free....More

On a recent episode of the What The Tech podcast, Andrew Zarian and I discussed the ongoing move to the cloud and away from local, PC-based data storage. I coined the term “zero data” during this discussion as a way to describe the goal of ensuring that the master copy of all data is stored in the cloud and not on a single device that could be lost, stolen, or otherwise incapacitated. But this is isn’t anything new, really, and my use of various online services has evolved in 2012 and will continue to do so....More

In Windows Phone 7.x, you could make on-device purchases in Windows Phone Marketplace using credit/debit cards associated with your Microsoft account or, if supported, through your wireless carrier. In Windows Phone 8, these options have expanded to include PayPal and Microsoft gift cards, for apps and games only....More