Microsoft will retire Zune music subscriptions on devices starting November 15

It is the end of an era.

Microsoft’s Zune isn’t quite the most successful player on the planet, but the music services that Redmond launched with the device lived longer, despite the many changes that the company has made in the last few years.

Microsoft will close its Zune music subscription service on November 15.

Fortunately, these days if you buy music from Microsoft’s Groove Music store (or Google Play, Amazon MP3, or most other online music stores), it’ll be available as a DRM-free download. Furthermore, it also pulled video support for all Xbox devices as well.

“As a Zune customer, you’ve been a big part of our music community”, the email message notes. Yearly subscriptions will be converted to annual Groove Music Passes at $99.90 a year. Rather than just opening Groove and playing tunes to a Bluetooth speaker, music lovers first need to fire up the Sonos app and then sign into a service and to access their library.

However the good news is that there will be a transition and for those who are subscribed to Zune Music Pass, you guys will be automatically converted to the Groove Music Pass. For those who subscribed on a month-to-month basis, this will occur the next billing cycle and will continue at $9.99 a month. Shuttering of Zune Music doesn’t come as a surprise, or it shouldn’t be.

Existing Zune devices and MP3s you own should work fine after Zune itself shuts down. You will also have the option to remove songs from your Zune player if you please.

Zune’s problem was the fact that it did not offer anything original at all, and instead it focused on copying everything that its competitors did.It is a miracle that it survived for so long, and it is for the best that it will finally be shutdown.