I was wrong about Music on XboxOne: You get 15 free song plays then need Music Pass for ad-free streaming. No ad-supported streaming. Sorry!— Albert Penello (@albertpenello) November 6, 2013
The ad-supported free version of Xbox Music won’t be available on the Xbox One after all.
In October 2012, Microsoft unveiled Xbox Music, a streaming service with 30 million tracks on tap. A free, ad-supported version is available to Windows 8 users but the Xbox 360 edition of the service requires a $9.99 monthly fee. It was a pleasant surprise, then, when Microsoft Director of Product Planning Albert Penello said on Twitter a few days ago that Xbox One owners will be able to access the free version of Xbox Music as long as they have an Xbox Live Gold subscription.
Alas, it turns out that he was mistaken. “I was wrong about Music on XboxOne: You get 15 free song plays then need Music Pass for ad-free streaming,” he tweeted earlier today. “No ad-supported streaming. Sorry!”
The obvious question is, why not? Xbox 360 and Xbox One owners are already paying a fee for their Gold subscriptions, after all, so why force them to pay over and above that while PC users can get away with just sitting through an ad? Penello noted in a follow-up that “Xbox Music supports Play-To of all your music directly from your PC,” but do you have 30 million tracks on your PC? Probably not.
Source: Twitter
