Line kills former Nokia music service MixRadio

PanARMENIAN.Net - Mobile messaging giant Line has announced that it’s shuttering MixRadio, the music-streaming service it acquired from Microsoft 14 months ago, VnetureBeat reported Tuesday, February 16.

MixRadio was initially developed by Nokia way back in 2007, though over the years, it has been known under various names, such as Nokia Music and Nokia MixRadio. The service was taken over as part of Nokia’s $7 billion acquisition by Microsoft in 2014, but given that it already had its own music service in the form of Xbox Music, Microsoft offloaded MixRadio to Japan’s Line later that year.

Having previously been absent from Android and iOS, Line finally launched apps for the dominant mobile platforms last summer, in the hope of gaining traction around the world. But alas, it seems the party’s over after less than a year as a cross-platform service.

For the uninitiated, Line rose to prominence back in 2011 for its WhatsApp-style messaging app. Now, it claims north of 200 million monthly active users (MAU) in more than 200 countries, though the majority of these users exist across a few countries in Asia, including its native Japan. In some ways, MixRadio could be construed as Line’s attempt to gain traction in markets around the world where it has previously struggled to find a foothold with its core product.