Microsoft Integrates OneDrive with Xbox Music

So just one day after I express my love of Xbox Music, Microsoft has made the service even better by delivering on a long-promised music locker feature by which you can store your own music in OneDrive. That functionality is now live and doesn’t require a paid Xbox Music Pass subscription.

“We’re happy to announce that Xbox Music has integrated with OneDrive to allow access to your entire personal music collection from your Xbox Music application for free!” an Xbox Music support note, um, notes. “As of today, any music files that you upload to your new Music folder in OneDrive will start to show up in your collection on music.xbox.com and in the Xbox Music apps for Windows 8.1, Windows Phone 8.1, Xbox 360, and Xbox One – no Music Pass required!  If you do have a Xbox Music Pass, you even get an extra 100GB of storage on your OneDrive!”

Anticipating this change, I had previously created a Music folder in OneDrive and started copying over music that can’t be found in the Xbox Music Store, including, among other things, my remastered Beatles CD rips. That music is now appearing in my Xbox Music clients, including the web version.

To get started yourself, create a Music folder in the root of OneDrive if it’s not already there. Then, Upload your favorite music files (MP3, AAC at least, perhaps other formats) from your hard drive to the OneDrive Music folder. You can do this from a web browser or using the desktop sync tool in Windows. Then, just sign out and sign-in again to the Xbox Music app on your PC, Windows Phone, Xbox or the web. Your OneDrive music files will be listed as songs in your collection, “free to play wherever you go.”

You can add up to 50,000 songs to your collection. And your uploaded music works exactly as you’d expect. You can add it to playlists, for example, and if you delete it from OneDrive, it disappears from your collection in Xbox Music (and vice versa). The only big downside I can see is that it won’t show up in Xbox Music on Android or iPhone.

This is a great day.