 Atleast for some of the Zune Marketplace’s catalog we may see the option of purchasing DRM-free tracks. This comes after the huge media attention driven by Apple by introducing DRM-free tracks. The blogosphere and the general online community loves the idea of DRM-free media and Microsoft seems to be heading in the same direction.
 This may or may not extend past EMI. But Microsoft has said that they have been talking with various labels on making this happen. This would certainly bring some more people to the Zune and would I believe help remove those awful limitations on sharing music. It would also bring on some ’switchers’ who want DRM-free music. This will obviously not effect the ZunePass because DRM is required on that otherwise RIAA would go nuts.
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Microsoft may make the Zune less of an iPod competitor and more of an iTunes competitor. They may follow the lead that cell phone companies have been using for ages, free [or discounted] phone with the purchase of a contract (typically for 2 years). This will ultimately be the same way that the iPhone will be cheaper to buy from Cingular, but in this case you pay the fee for the music and the contract is with Microsoft.
Speculation has begun from a comment made by Zune marketing director Jason Reindorp. He stated that they were looking at a Zune Pass subscription that is like a cell phone contract. The model has worked very well for the cell phone industry, so why not for the MP3 marketplace?
It’s quite a good concept because it really would bring in more customers. Most people don’t really use the WiFi functionality of the Zune, so that really isn’t a killer app. However, the concept of being able to download all your music and get a Zune music player for a fixed price, well that sounds pretty good for the average joe.
The only thing they need to do though is keep the price point of the device at the same point. This would be disaster for Apple, because would you rather buy an MP3 player (iPod) or a 2-year subscription with a Zune for the same price? Some would call this a VERY smart move. Let’s see how it goes.
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<p>So now you can choose to get your EMI music from the iTunes stor;
Today Steve Jobs announced that the iTunes store will begin selling songs by EMI on iTunes without DRM! This move has been expected for a while with Steve Jobs open letter to the industry. However, the DRM-free versions of the songs will cost you 30 cents more. An added bonus of getting a DRM-free song from iTunes is that the quality of the file will be better which will be good news for some of us.
So now you can choose to get your EMI music from the iTunes store, if you own a Zune. But this won’t be big for most of us, because most music comes from Universal and secondly from Sony BMG. However, this is a move that will shake the industry.
At this point there is no word on whether the Zune Marketplace will follow and include EMI’s DRM-free library. However, it does seem likely to happen soon as more labels move towards DRM-free music. So enjoy in this new found freedom!
Update: When Microsoft was contact and asked about this by Engadget, this is what they had to say:
Consumers have indicated [having DRM free music] is important to them so Zune has been working with a variety of partners to head in this direction
Just a reminder that the firmware update that you’ve been waiting for is now available. There is nothing new in the firmware other than fixing a couple of issues.
These are the things you’ll find on the update, as listed by Cesar for ZuneInsider:
We’re fixing the skipping problem that some users were experiencing – that is, content acquired from Zune Marketplace will no longer skip when played on the device.
Improved device and software reliability, when it comes to device detection, and improved sync’ing.
We’ve made some changes to the FM Tuner so it no longer drains the battery when in sleep mode.
ZuneBoards is offering a hack that allows you to remove the guest sync feature off your Zune. For most Zune users this probably will not be useful. But if you are someone that swiches your Zune between computers then this hack will be beneficial for you.
The purpose of this hack is so that when you plug in your Zune to a computer (that is not your primary computer) you will not see the pop up asking you whether you would like to use your Zune as a guest on the new computer or clear the Zune’s hard drive and in a sense start fresh on the new computer. For numerous reasons this may cause issues for you. Some problems would be if you lost your old harddrive and needed to get your music back you would be unable to do that with the Guest feature and if you chose the second feature you would delete the files in the process. The hack could prove beneficial in that sense, but the chance of that happening are slim.
More information on the hack can be found here. But I would personally suggest burning a backup of your music, videos and pictures onto a CD.
It does not look good for the team that Microsoft has assigned their marketing for Zune to do. First we had that incident with a marketer playing very loud music at 3AM on the streets of New York which got more than a couple of people angry. Microsoft has offered an apology to those people, but Im sure they weren’t very happy at the people behind the marketing of that.
Now it appears that the marketing team is getting into more trouble. This time at the SXSW music festival, a marketer has been arrested for “spamming the streets” or otherwise known as vandalism of public property. This was probably a good place for Microsoft to advertise, seeing that this was a music festival. But it appears that Microsoft will be losing out on this opertunity due to poor marketing.
Engadget reports that the marketer will get 3 days in jail and that Microsoft gave them the following information: We can confirm that an employee of a marketing agency engaged by Zune was cited for hanging promotional posters at SXSW. We’ve launched an internal investigation and will cooperate with local authorities and festival organizers in all regards. Zune is committed to lawfully and respectfully promoting its products and services.”
Hopefully this is the end of Microsoft’s mess up’s with the Zune marketing. Below are images of the marketer being arrested and what he was planning on spamming the streets with.
Last year we saw images of a keyboard that would have a Zune dock integrated into it. Now Gizmodo has published some more images of the keyboard and it looks really nice. The keyboard is supposedly made by Razer Pro, but there are as of now no details of the Zune keyboard on the website. In regards to that a release date for this product still has not been given.
Another interesting thing I found was that the Zune keyboard looks exactly like the iPod keyboard developed by Razor aswell. The keyboard also keeps that white colour that is assosiated with Apple. So I still have doubts that this product is real. Regardless I have included several images of the products below. Enjoy.
