On November 15, 2015, Microsoft made the decision to finally retire all Zune-related services. This announcement comes long after the decision to retire the Zune hardware itself in October 2011, with the urging for users to transition to Windows Phones.
Maybe our readers might have a more pressing question, though: what the heck is the Zune? You might have heard of it, but it’s just as likely that it flew directly under your radar, being that its popularity peaked nearly a decade ago and it existed solely as an obscure Microsoft-branded counterpart in an already niche market. Like Icarus, Microsoft tried to fly on wings of feathers and wax; unlike Icarus, they simply crashed into the sea.
After the jump, we’ll get into a brief history of the Zune and exactly why it failed as it did.