Microsoft to release Karaoke for Xbox 360

Microsoft has been adding new features to the Xbox 360. According to PlayXBLA, Microsoft and The Karaoke Channel will let you stream songs for an hourly fee in the new Karaoke app.

The app is said to offer more than 8,000 tracks, with genres ranging from pop to rock to country to R&B. The Karaoke Channel claims that the app’s major advantage over other music games is that you don’t have to store the music on your Xbox 360. Instead you could simply stream whatever song you wish to sing along to.

Available on Xbox Live in time for the holidays, Karaoke for the Xbox 360 will have a selection of free sample songs that will change frequently. Full access to the entire library is available for blocks of two, six, and 24 hours by redeeming Microsoft Points. Songs are added to the library on a regular basis as they are produced and licensed, giving everyone a great reason to launch The Karaoke Channel on Xbox Live to discover new songs to sing.

More from News & Analysis

What is the US HIRE Bill and why is India’s $250-billion IT sector worried? Is the internet dead? What's this theory that OpenAI's Sam Altman says might be true?

The Xbox 360 is getting a Karaoke app

Back in October, Microsoft had released its yearly major update for the Xbox 360 dashboard. Perhaps the biggest feature in the new dashboard update for the Xbox 360 other than Internet Explorer is the inclusion of Xbox Music. Microsoft had officially taken the wraps off its latest attempt at a music service a day before the update was released. Xbox Music shows that the company is focusing on the Xbox 360 as more than just a gaming machine; the company looks at the console as an entertainment machine. This can be seen through the inclusion of many apps over the years, such as Netflix, Facebook and ESPN, among others.

The company seems to have realised recently that music is just as important for consumers. During the launch, Xbox Music general manager Jerry Johnson said, “We also realize, as an entertainment company, that music is an important ingredient on its own and as a part of different user experiences.”

This would be Microsoft’s second attempt at creating a music channel, the first being the not-very-successful Zune. This time, the company is focusing on integrating the service into as many of its devices as it can. While starting with the Xbox 360, the company plans to integrate the service into other devices that would be running Windows 8 or Windows Phone 8 through its SkyDrive cloud service.

Microsoft’s Xbox Music aims to compete with the likes of Spotify by giving the capabilities to stream music, and have a free as well as a paid account. The main attraction of the service would be the inclusion of a download-to-own music store. The store will include over 30 million songs in its catalogue, rivalling, and surpassing the catalogue on Apple’s iTunes. The service is also all set to have over 70,000 music videos, but these music videos will only be available for the Xbox 360.

Microsoft removed the Facebook and Twitter apps from the Xbox 360 dashboard last month. “We are retiring the Facebook and Twitter apps,” Microsoft confirmed in a statement. “Xbox Live subscribers will have the ability to access these sites through Internet Explorer on Xbox, available through the Web Hub located on the new dashboard.”