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Microsoft Kills Off Zune Music Service (networkworld.com)
alphadogg writes: It's one of those "You mean it was still alive?" moments: Microsoft today officially has killed off its Zune music streaming and download service. The company notified users in September that Zune services would be retired on Nov. 15. Microsoft has been phasing out its Zune brand for some time now, with Zune music service being morphed into Xbox music and then Groove music. Devices were discontinued in 2011.
How can you trust these online services? One of the biggest IT related companies was behind this service, yet they pull the plug. This is not some service that you only use as long as you need it for your project. It is a service that replaces the old school 'buy a record, and keep forever' type of consumption goods. What when you want to throw a party with a couple of good friends within a decade or two and say "do you remember this song?" followed by a silence when you want to start that old song because the service no longer exists?
For now iTunes seems to work. Steam seems to work. The cloud for files is only used as an online backup (in my case), so I'm safe there too. Steam is in fact a service that let many games evolve to newer and better platforms. Some old games didn't work anymore on newer operating systems, but I've found out that some of them now even work on Linux and Mac. But it is just a matter of time before they pull the plug.
I still don't trust iTunes, although I only buy music through iTunes. It is just way too easy: What's this song, click buy, and you 'own' the song. I always sync the iTunes library to my main Linux desktop and hope I can safe my music collection this way, so I can throw a party when I'm 55, and do the shuffle on that old school drum'n bass tune I still have on iTunes in 2030 (and probably end up in hospital, in my mind I'm still 21 years old, but my body doesn't seem to follow my mind).