A new way to look at Microsoft Zune

If you read my blog, you probably already know I am a big fan of Microsoft’s Zune. As disheartened as I am when people haven’t heard about it, I get even more frustrated when people don’t get it, and give Zune and the ZunePass subscription a bad rap without even understanding it.

I am going to try another way to look at it, that maybe will make you understand it a little better, and see the benefits of the service.

Your Own Private Idaho

Not really Idaho, imagine if you had your own radio station. One that only played music that you like. The soundtrack to your life if you will. Today I have been playing with the Smart DJ feature in the 4.0 version of the Zune software.

Now the Genius feature in iTunes grabs what it thinks are songs you will like to listen together from your library, and organizes them for you in little playlists, that’s nice and all. The problem is you won’t hear anything that’s not in your library. Zune’s Smart DJ leverages your library to help understand who you are and what you like, but then it grabs music from your library AND the entire ZunePass catalog. Today alone I have found five or six must have CDs. It has you pick just four artists you like right off the bat. I chose Steve Vai, Megadeth, Dream Theater and Foo Fighters. I clicked the Smart DJ on Steve Vai, and it found him and his obvious contemporaries in my library, but the music it pulled in from ZunePass was incredible. If you are a guitar music guy, download some Tak Matsumoto, trust me!

A New Way To See

So the problem you will probably throw back at me is the ZunePass subscription. $14.99 a month seems to get in the way for a lot of people. Let me first make one point extremely clear, this is a point I see misunderstood more often than not:

YOU DON’T HAVE TO USE ZUNEPASS TO USE A ZUNE! It will operate like an iPod/iTunes with purely purchased unprotected MP3s, as well as your own songs and rip your CDs, just like you would expect.

That being said, why the heck wouldn’t you! Think about this:

• It costs about as much as buying one CD per month.
• It’s two dollars cheaper than the premium XM Radio subscription.
• It’s the same price as downloading 15 songs per month on iTunes.
• It’s way cheaper than a cup of coffee a day for you Sally Struthers types.
• It’s less than 50 cents a day man, how cheap are you, really?

The Value

I am not always sure what people think ZunePass entails, but imagine going to iTunes, and being able to download whatever you want, whenever you want. Of course there are a few artists you can’t *ahem, Metallica* but most of them are there and not only do you get to listen to any of that stuff, you get to download 10 songs per month you can keep as clean clear MP3s.

If you were to compare it to XM or Sirius, other subscription based services, the benefit is clear if you like music. You can keep the music that you download on up to three Zune devices AND three computers AND on the web. For me that means I can listen to it when I am at home on my Media Center PC (as well as through my extender on any Xbox 360 in the house as one single device), I can listen to it on my laptop, I can listen to it on my work computer, then I can also have it on a Zune I keep in my car, a Zune I carry around, and my newly ordered Zune HD when it comes in. To top that off, I can listen to it on any computer I am at through the browser, both PC and Mac.

If you compare that to paying $17 a month to have access to a bunch of channels of music you might want to listen to on one device, that’s not much of an option at all is it?

The Devices

This article is meant to talk about the service and software, but I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that Zunes are really very nice media players. Both Video and Audio, as well as FM Radio (HD Radio on the Zune HD) built in WiFi to sync your music without connecting to your computer as well as download new music from the device if you are in a hotspot. Let me tell you a story about that…

My wife, Andy and I were traveling about 6 months ago. We had gotten into listening to comedy albums, but ran out. We found a Burger King with WiFi, I connected up, I browsed the store, and I downloaded some new Comedy albums to the device while we ate. When we hit the road we had plenty more to listen to. That’s hard to beat eh?

It’s worth a shot

I am betting you can find yourself a very cheap 1st or 2nd gen Zune if you want to try this thing out and see if you like it. The real beauty is that Microsoft understands the nature of software, and updates even the old Zunes, that means your 1st generation Zune will have the same software features as my new 120GB 3rd Gen Zune.

If you are skeptical, sign up for 14 days of free ZunePass and see what all is out there to listen to, you’ll be amazed at the service, I am sure of it.

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