The venerable streaming service current available for Windows Phone 7 devices, PCs and XBox 360’s is coming to Canada. Zune Pass, which was originally slated for expansion up north alongside an aborted push of the Zune Music Player never actually arrived, though users in the States have been enjoying its slightly pricey benefits for years.
As it stands, for $9.99/month Canadians will be able to stream over 14 million tracks and, as Microsoft claims, “tens of thousands of indie tunes,” through a number of sources, though as with most streaming music services, only one stream at a time. The main difference between the offering here vs. the one in the States is that we don’t get the choice of paying $5 extra every month to keep 10 tracks forever. This was one of the biggest draws to the Zune Pass, and is something that will still be offered to U.S. customers, though they will also have a crack at the $9.99 streaming-only option.
Will the Zune Pass work in Canada, especially after the much-publicized launch of Rdio and Slacker Radio Unlimited, each of which offer multi-platform music streaming for the same price? For many users, the influential factor will not be the music selection or even the user interface, but rather their proclivity for XBox 360, which is in many millions of Canadian homes. While we applaud the proliferation of choice in Canadian a la carte streaming services, we wonder if the price is a bit high, and the install base too small for it to make much of a difference. Nevertheless, we’ll give it a try for a month and report back. Why don’t you do the same when it becomes available on Monday, October 3rd?
Source: Windows Team Blog
