Direct purchases finally allowed at Zune Marketplace

28th June, 2010 by adina
Tags: , , , , , ,

Microsoft has started to allow direct purchases for music by credit card at Zune Marketplace. As part of the Bing refresh, this move is meant to make simpler buying tracks resulted from search. It also makes possible for customers to skip buying Microsoft Points which were previously needed when they wanted to get any article from the store. As for the prices, they are more or less on par with the rivals’ ones.

This may be a significant step for Microsoft, as its music store has not proved to be attractive enough since it was launched together with the Zune MP3 player. The US market reflects the share of players working with it and therefore the Zune Marketplace only had 2.6 percent last year. Apple’s iTunes, on the other hand, had 69 percent. The situation is unchanged this year as iTunes has grown slightly and Amazon MP3 took significant share from the smaller competitors. Part of Microsoft’s lack of energy has occurred from the complexity of the store. The procedure requiring buying points as an intermediary step not only makes the process more complicated but also has been incriminated of trying to hide the real price of the music.

The main advantage has been the way the points could be used for Xbox Live as an addition to the store, but none of these services has been completely integrated. Music from Zune will finally reach the Xbox 360 by means of a Dashboard update available later this year and supporting limitless Zune Pass streaming.


  • Share

 

Readers Comments