Microsoft Australia have just announced they have finally got the deal done with music labels to offer Zune Pass in Australia. For just $11.99 per month or $119.99 per year, Australians can enjoy access to over 11 Million tracks. This now becomes serious competition to the iTunes model which still lacks a subscription service.
Naturally the downside of subscription is the music goes away if you stop paying. Until recently, the US version of Zune Pass allowed users to download 10 songs per month to keep. This feature was discontinued and won’t be available in Australia.
Delivering a music purchasing system to Windows Phone 7, solves one of it’s biggest issues. As crazy as it sounds, users were forced to purchase music through another service like iTunes, then sync to their WP7 device. It’s great to see this finally being resolved and the Zune on WP7 becoming a full end-to-end ecosystem.
The Xbox 360 access to the Zune pass is likely to arrive with the new Dashboard to be released soon. If you chose, you will be able to stream your favourite tracks from the Zune collection while playing your favourite game.
Zune Pass Australia arrives November 16th.
