Nokia Music, which later evolved to become Nokia MixRadio (and then MixRadio alone) is being sold to Line Corporation. Microsoft earlier acquired the service from Nokia together with the acquisition of Nokia’s Devices & Services business. Since Microsoft managed its own music service as Xbox Music, MixRadio was already expected to be dumped.
Line Corporation, the company behind Line Messenger also started off with a subscription based music service recently and this purchase is most probably done to further expand the availability of Line Music. So, it won’t be surprising to see Mix Radio receiving a yet another re-branding to merge into Line Music.
Jyrki Rosenberg, Head of MixRadio, said, “LINE shares our vision and passion for simple, personal and fun user experiences while constantly delivering innovation to our listeners. This partnership presents huge scope to expand our service to even more people around the world.”
Having known that Line team is not interested in investing much in Windows Phone due to its low market share, we could also see the departure of MixRadio from the Windows Phone ecosystem or a much reduced attention as Android and iOS will be the key areas of growth for their Music Service. MixRadio already started expanding to wearables and home audio systems though.
Source – Line Corp.
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