Ever since SkyDrive was born five years ago as one of the first massive cloud storage systems, little by little its features have been improved and expanded. It integrates with Outlook.com, Excel, and Word, and is very intuitive and useful. However, what we will discuss today is the possible release of a cloud music playing service integrated with SkyDrive, similar to Google Play Music or Amazon Cloud Player, which will be called MusicPlayer.
As part of Microsoft’s product restructuring, SkyDrive has become an efficient, well designed, and very practical service. Now the rumor is spreading that they are working on the launch of an online music player associated with this successful cloud storage service, although to the day Microsoft hasn’t confirmed anything. In fact, the information comes from the blog LiveSide, which has found several references to something called MusicPlayer within SkyDrive.com’s HTML code.
The company at Redmond has been working on unifying all of its services and products, but the idea of launching a music streaming service linked only to SkyDrive is most likely aimed at users that don’t have the latest Microsoft operating system. Let us remember that Windows 7 is still the most used operating system on computers across the globe.
Another problem on the horizon for SkyDrive MusicPlayer is the competition that it faces. There are services with a solid base in the market, such as Amazon Cloud Player, Apple’s iCloud, Google Music Player, and the recently announced Spotify Web Player, among others. They all offer the ability to store music on the cloud, which is why Microsoft will have to lure users in with something more in order for them to abandon those services and switch to MusicPlayer.
That being said, let’s not get too ahead of ourselves, considering it is just a rumor based on what someone saw in some HTML code.
If the rumors are true, what Microsoft would be doing–establishing an online platform where users can store music on the cloud and listen to it anywhere they are–isn’t anything new. Before making any assumptions, we should remember that Microsoft already has a music streaming service, which was launched in October: Xbox Music, a cross-platform service that can be used on Windows 8, Xbox 360, and Windows Phone, as well as other devices, to unite the small universe of the company’s products.
