Microsoft announced the rebrand of Xbox Music to Groove Music back in early July 2015 and ZDNet.com and many other sites questioned if Microsoft had acquired a company called Zikera, which was founded in 2009 and had over 1.5 Million downloads of its app according to CrunchBase. A Microsoft spokesperson said “we have nothing more to share at this time.” according to the ZDNet article in early July 2015.
Why would Microsoft want to buy Zikera? Well, Zikera already had a music app called Groove: Smart Music Player on both IOS and Windows app store. Potentially confusion?
Well, as of August 18, 2015 the following domain names that were owned by Zikera have transferred ownership to Microsoft Corporation:
GrooveMusicApp.com: which was the main domain name used by Zikera and forwarded to iTunes for the Groove app.
StartGrooving.com
The domain name GrooveMusicApp.com now redirects to the Groove music page on Microsoft.
IMO, this is a very strong indicator that Mircosoft has acquired Zikera the company or at least anything related to the Groove Smart Music Player at a minimum!
Here is a screen shot of whois records showing Microsoft Corporation as the new owners of GrooveMusicApp.com:
