Microsoft To Pull The Plug On Zune?

There’s no doubt that the Zune brand, Microsoft’s poorly advertised and ill-fated music service (with hardware once!), has been on life-support for the last three years.  For Zune owners (there are three of us on this site), it’s merely been a waiting game of when the axe will finally fall.  Well, it looks like they might start sharpening their blades at the 2012 Electronic Entertainment Expo if a story reported by The Verge is true.

The story reports that Microsoft will be revealing a newly branded music service, codenamed ‘Woodstock’ and previewing the service on the Xbox 360 during E3.  However, the service will not actually launch until the release of Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8.

While we don’t usually speculate on rumors, it looks as though this one might be receiving further credence from a post made on the Windows Phone Blog yesterday.  The Windows Phone Team announced the removal of Windows Phone Apps from the Zune Marketplace using the Zune PC software.  However, you’ll be able to still find them through the Marketplace on your Windows Phone.  The only thing that you’ll need the Zune software for now is to download updates, pretty much removing any reason to use the software beyond that.  If that’s the case, the logical move in the future would be to eliminate the need for the Zune software altogether and allow Microsoft Updates to take over the phone update duties.

Source: The Verge, Windows Phone Blog