Microsoft Zune Brand Officially Dead

Microsoft's Zune brand is now officially dead.  Time death, was 12:01am ET, October 16th.   If you don't already know, Microsoft has been killing of the Zune brand little by little since the brand became unsuccessful.  Though the brand and hardware may be gone, the music service remains.  Microsoft has renamed it's music service to Xbox Music, attaching the Xbox branding.

Bizarrely, the branding will continue on for Windows 7 and Windows Phone 7 users, with the Zune Marketplace mirroring Xbox Music's content. That's likely due to Xbox Music being exclusive to Windows 8 devices (which includes the Xbox 360, despite its age, and Windows Phone 8) -- Microsoft promises a continued focus on Xbox Music going forward, while Zune support drops out. In the end, though Zune was a failure for Microsoft, Johnson said it was a worthwhile learning experience for the company. "The Zune brand got associated with a device, and what we did with Xbox Music is actually turn around and say, 'Let's build something from the ground up, leveraging what we've learned from a lot of these different things.' But it's not gonna be device-centric, it's gonna be service-centric," he explained.

Starting today, the Xbox Music feature went live on the Xbox 360.  You can try it out for Free for 30-days, in which after, you'll need both a current Zune Pass (now an "Xbox Music Pass" for $9.99/month or $99.90/year) and Xbox Live Gold Pass to continue using the service.  The Zune PC Software will be coming to Windows 8 users on October 26th.

Source: Engadget