Signs of this feature have been written about for several months now and the switch has finally been flipped to implement this long awaited enhancement to OneDrive and Xbox Music.
What is great about this new functionality is that anyone can use it as it does not require an Xbox Music Pass. However, if you do happen to have an Xbox Music Pass then you will discover 100GB of additional storage in your OneDrive account to help you store those massive music collections.
If you want to access your personal music collection on your phone then you will need Windows Phone 8.1 and use the latest version of the Music app. You will also need an Xbox Live Account in order to access your collection there.
On the desktop and/or tablet side you will need Windows 8.1 in order to get the latest version of the Music app from the Store.
Don’t forget about your Xbox 360 or Xbox One consoles as you can also access your entire Music library on OneDrive through both of those consoles using the Music app.
As a last resort you can also directly access your collection from OneDrive by accessing it through a web browser at music.xbox.com/collection. Internet Explorer, Chrome and FireFox all work based on my quick tests.
So how do you get started?
Just upload all of your music collection to the special Music folder on OneDrive using File Explorer only and do not try to do this via the web.
The music files can be MP3, M4A (AAC) and WMA based files and shortly after you upload them they will be accessible from all of the places I mentioned earlier.
For more information on the OneDrive/Xbox Music integration check out these sites:
https://music.xbox.com/onedrive - contains the Frequently Asked Questions about the new integration.
http://xboxmusic.uservoice.com/knowledgebase/articles/517320 - Xbox User Voice integration announcement.
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/musicandvideo/forum?tab=Threads – Microsoft Xbox Music and Video support forums.
