A recent job posting over on Microsoft Careers has caused a wave of speculation that Zune music services may be getting renamed to "Xbox Live Music." The posting, entitled "Business Manager-IEB-Xbox Live Music Marketplace," calls for a candidate who is "passionate about driving [Microsoft's] first party Music business in the US across multiple tuner end points; Xbox 360, Windows Phone 7, PC, WWW and Bing." Most notably, the would-be Interactive Entertainment Business team member would be "responsible for management of relationships with two of the four major record labels as well as a number of high profile indie labels, and creating strategies around content to drive the Zune Music business."
The new moniker seems to be in line with Microsoft's decision to kill off the Zune music player back in March, followed by the guarantee that their Zune Hardware Business Developer would "be going to work tomorrow." The Zune media player never quite took off the way MS would have liked, but the marketplace was a great infrastructure in which to base WP7's app store. Perhaps the potential name change is simply the first step in a re-branding to bring Windows, Windows Phone, Xbox, and Zune together. One green ring to rule them all!
Source: Microsoft Careers; Via: WPSauce
Comments
I'm Sorry but Xbox Live Music just sounds stupid. MS changes the name to their products and services too much, At the end it's just hurting the brand. They should just keep it Zune and stop causing confusion
Xbox Live Music is a bad name choice, but the Zune naming is somewhat confusing. The marketplace is called Zune, the MP3 player is called Zune, the PC software is called Zune. The bigger problem is that the subscription music service is now competing with other services that are available on a lot more platforms including (iOS, Android, Roku,Tivo, Mac, Blu-ray players, and TV sets). The Zune Pas$ footprint is not as big as it needs to be to be competitive, it needs to be accessible on every device. Edit: the censorship on this site is ridculous, can't even write Zune Pa ss
the mp3 player is not a factor come on, it basically doesnt sell. so hows the confusion.
It's still unlikely MS will totally kill off the Zune brand name, especially considering the Zune brand is a heavily advertised part of WP7. However it does have the potential to be a great marketing scheme for their Xbox Live service. The average consumer may look at Zune on the dashboard and dismiss it just like the ESPN app. However, a simple renaming and suddenly "Xbox Live Music" becomes another "feature" of the 360 that you'd be foolish to not at least try. All the while missing the little "powered by Zune" logo in the bottom right corner.
At this point I think a rebranding would be a waste. If they're looking to primarily appeal to the Xbox userbase, they're already well aware of Zune's status as the media marketplace. The way they brand the storefront on the 360 dash integrates well as it is with the color coding of Xbox Green and Zune Pink/Orange
I agree with the other comments; name is kind of off. They need to get these more consistant. The service names seem to be all over the place. Condencing many of these services under one name could do wonders. Live is fine but I would like to see how they organize themselves to consumers, cause I cant see it.What they need to do is create one Live Marketplace, which can be browsed from either windows(PC/Phone) or xbox. It would integrate Music, Video, Games, and Applications, using our Live ID. Obviously things would be restricted depending on platform, but it would be unified. Windows Live Marketplace in place of what zune does now, and Xbox Live Marketplace in place of what the games, this "Xbox Live Music", and the current Zune Video store do. Perhaps eventually they would be one in the same, when we could buy games on the marketplace and play them on Xbox, Phone, and Windows. Indie Games would be a good starting point! /Hopes&Dreams
There you go thinking logically! maybe they can back to that once the lawsuit sanctions expire and then they can maybe get back to direct synching of outlook with windows (not mobile) phone
Structurally, it makes sense to put Zune under the Live brand as it's part of the Live ecosystem. But "Live Music" doesn't sound as snappy as "Zune", much like "Live Search" which was eventually rebranded to "Bing". And I wouldn't have thought that the Live brand was that strong outside of the context of the Xbox.
Microsoft simply sucks at naming things. They got too many teams working on too many services, and when they all try to work together (as advertised in their products)it just becomes a mess.
I thought Zune was a great name. It's simple and still unique, and quite similar to the word "tune" which ties in with relativity. I think it would have went much further if they just advertised/marketed it more. It seemed like Microsoft was embarrassed with it when it didn't take off too well in the beginning. Maybe they thought pushing for a popular music store wouldn't work out so well, too? They have made those mistakes before.
Now re-name the OS XBOX Mobile
Expect to see Windows changed to XTop in the near future. ;)
If you are gonna rebrand....rebrand. But do it with something that is a little more marketable and has a little more of a catchy name then Xbox Live Music.....wow.
i have a feeling this is a misinterpretation of the title, when i read it i read "xbox live | music marketplace" as in, the music marketplace section of xbox live, which is how it is stated in the current xbox dashboard (iirc, as i haven't turned on my xbox in a week due to lack of free time)i also agree that xbox live music is a terrible name, live music is slightly better, but personally, i see msft keeping the zune brand around for a while yet (the hardware i'm less sure of though, but a phone-less zune running gen2 wp7 hardware would make for a nice upgrade of my zuneHD, which is still the best pmp i've ever had, but i would like a slightly larger screen (3.8" - 4" would be killer)
You could be right. Especially since Zune offers more than just a marketplace for music.
They already have the Game marketplace, video marketplace so a music marketplace based off of Zune but not in it's own section basically alone is a good thing I think.If you get access to Zune (Music Marketplace) as part of being a gold member and have the same benefits of the Zune **** but limited to the Xbox then it does add value to being a gold member and doesn't directly effect Zune itself. In this case MS can turn around and use the cost of the Zune **** as a way to have your music on the 3 screens, while this Xbox Live Music is, again, just for the Xbox.
Microsoft wouldn't know a cool branding name if they locked it's entire marketing department in a freezer.
I thought Zune was branded in a cool way. Bad press coverage didn't help though (ie. "Porn found on Zune media device"). But like I said in another reply here, they should have advertised/promoted it more.
xbox live music? nope not gonna happen. that's a mouth full like when they started with the "Windows Phone 7 Series" which then it was rename to just "Windows Phone 7". when someone says xbox I know its a gaming console, when someone says Zune I know its a Music service and when you hear windows phone 7 you know its a phone. I don't think the name Zune its going to be killed off, but I might be wrong.
This is exactly what I was afraid of. I hope it never happens.
Let's see. Successful brand name. Xbox. Unsuccessful brand name. Zune. Duh. Sorry if you don't like it guys....but there it is.
Adding Xbox to the name does not at all guarantee successful branding, and it's even more complicated when re-branding an existing service/product. It could even hurt, especially since not all Zune users are Xbox users (like me).
Microsoft doesn't really have that much to loose. Not that many people use Zune.
I don't like the name, but I understand what Microsoft (or the marketing firm they hired) is trying to do: shift branding of XBox into more than just a gaming machine. It is becoming a full-service entertainment media system.Truth be told, I've never really been fond of "Zune" either. It never felt right. Maybe something like XBeat would have been better, except that could have led to a whole laundry list of XProducts. And that would have looked like a poorly executed iMetoo.(Tossing the idea of LIVE Phone around in my head, and how they could have easily used a tag line along the lines of "Get back to your life with LIVE" when rolling out the phone....)