Microsoft has made it clear that a scan-and-match system for storing your personal music collection on the cloud is in the works for its new Xbox Music program, but hasn’t yet shared all the details on just how it would actually work. Some newly-discovered evidence now points to SkyDrive getting a cloud-based music playback feature, which may be how Microsoft finally ends up implementing the system.
References in the SkyDrive website code make references to a “MusicPlayer”, and imagery resources reveal just the sort of track control interface we’d expect to see from this kind of service. For the moment, it’s difficult to say if this is that Xbox Music functionality we heard about, or if it could be a separate project entirely; if the latter turns out to be the case, we wonder if Microsoft may have already halted development on the project, re-allocating those resources towards Xbox Music proper.
Microsoft had already talked about its cloud music system going live sometime in 2013, so chances are we won’t see any big developments along this SkyDrive angle before the year’s out.
