Microsoft announces sale of MixRadio to LINE

As has been rumored for some time, today Microsoft finally announced the sale of the MixRadio music service, which was part of the Nokia division acquired by Redmond more than a year ago, and therefore, until now, was under the ownership of Satya Nadella's company.

The lucky buyer is Line Corporation, the company that owns the LINE courier service, which today has more than 170 Millions of active users. As soon as the purchase is completed, the team that until now was in charge of MixRadio within Microsoft will go to work for Line.Of course, no details have yet been published on other conditions of the transaction, such as the amount to be paid by Microsoft, or if other roy alties have been requested in exchange for the sale.

What changes can we expect at MixRadio after this sale?

Before this news, the first thing many Lumia and MixRadio users will ask themselves is what changes will we see in the future in this service now that will be in the hands of Line.

While we can't have a definitive answer as there are no official announcements yet, MixRadio will most likely end up becoming available on other platforms , such as Android or iOS. This is because Line Corporation will seek to make the service profitable on its own, unlike what has happened so far, where MixRadio's goal was simply to increase sales of Lumia phones by adding value to Windows Phone.

To achieve such monetization, Line will need to increase the service's user base, in a similar way to what Nokia has done with HERE Maps. Of course, at MixRadio they assure us that this will not imply an abandonment of Windows Phone users ("> MixRadio will be a very important component within Line Corporation, so the logical thing is that the company put more efforts to innovate in the service, and thus make it more competitive with Spotify, Rdio or Pandora.

In the same vein as the above, there may be a geographical expansion of MixRadio Today this service is available only in about thirty markets, which leaves out the majority of users in Latin America and elsewhere, which should change under Line's mandate.

Another change we can expect is the emergence of a greater dedication to improving the service and adding new featuresIt is no mystery to anyone that until now MixRadio was almost the last priority within Redmond, something that can be seen in the fact that its application for Windows Phone has hardly received updates in recent times. From now on that should no longer be the case, since MixRadio will be a very important component within Line Corporation, so the logical thing is that the company puts more efforts to innovate and incorporate changes that allow it to improve its position with respect to similar services. such as Rdio, Pandora or Spotify.

Of course, we will have to wait a bit for any of these things to happen, since the transaction between Microsoft and Line will not materialize until the beginning of 2015.

Via | Lumia Conversations