Microsoft is doing a lot lately to unify services across its platforms, and Xbox Music, a scan-and-match cloud music locker that’s planned for iOS, Android, Windows Phone and Windows 8 is a big part of that. Now, it looks like that service might also become part of SkyDrive, making it available from any browser, reports the Verge.
Graphic assets discovered in the SkyDrive website by Liveside, as well as code mentions of a music player suggest that Microsoft is building out web-based access to music playback, though it isn’t yet definitely connected to Xbox Music. But Microsoft has already committed to delivering cloud storage of music in the new year, and an earlier report from the Verge claimed that sources with knowledge of the project did indeed believe a browser-based, plugin-free version of the player for the service was also in the offing.
Of course, it’s also possible this is just a music player designed for handy playback of any media files users happen to have stored in their SkyDrive accounts, unrelated to Xbox Music. But as the company looks to pull together its cloud services and consolidate features across platforms, a cloud-based component of Xbox Music could definitely add a whole lot of appeal for users weighing its merits against competing services from Google and Amazon.