Zune HD music

Microsoft’s Zune Pass service lets subscribers listen to 14 million songs on-demand for a monthly fee. Right now you can also download and save up to 10 of those songs each month for no additional charge. It’s sort of like buying an album every month and getting a free on-demand radio service for your PC, Zune media player, or Windows Phone device while you’re at it.

On Monday that all changes. Microsoft will roll out new pricing on October 3rd.

The good news is that a Zune Pass subscription will drop from $14.99 per month to $9.99. The service will also expand to include Canada (right now it’s US-only). The bad news is that the 10 free songs per month feature will go away at the same time.

If you’re already a subscriber you’ll be able to stick with the higher-priced plan and keep your 10 downloads per month. But if that sounds like a good deal and you’re not already a subscriber, you might want to think about signing up before Monday.

The new $9.99 pricing makes sense — since that’s the price that Spotify, Slacker, MOG, Rdio, and pretty much every other music-on-demand service charges. It would just be nice if Microsoft continued to offer the premium service for new customers as well.

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2 replies on “Microsoft drops Zune Pass price… kills its best feature”

    1. Why? Current subscribers are not affected by this except that they can now stream unlimited music videos on the PC and Xbox.

      As long as I’m grandfathered in I have nothing to complain about and will never cancel my Zune Pass subscription.

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