Zune and ZunePass will change the way you listen to music
Disclaimer: I work for Microsoft but these opinions are my own, yada, yada. And I have nothing to do with the Zune team.
Here's the short version - paying a low monthly fee and being able to download as many songs as you want is killer. I've downloaded over 1000 songs just in my first week and I'm going strong. And the 'social' works.
ZunePass is the Zune's subscription service. You pay $14.99 per month and you can download any number of songs from the Zune marketplace. Since it is a subscription service, you lose access to the songs once you stop paying the monthly fee. Sounds DRM (it is) and evil, doesn't it? Not quite.
I'm staunchly anti-DRM. And I'm a huge fan of Apple's devices. I did all my music shopping on Amazon's MP3 store and listened to all my songs on my iPhone. When Mel Sampat asked to get a Zune, saying that it will change my life, I thought he was joking. But Mel was persistent and I went and got myself a red Zune 80 custom engraved from Zune Originals. I will post a review on the device soon but I wanted to talk about ZunePass and the Zune software first.
Exploring is a lot easier
Buying songs on Amazon/iTunes is cheap but not free. I bought a lot of songs but I would buy them only if I really wanted them. I would rarely take a chance on an unknown artist or song or album.
With ZunePass, since I'm not paying per song, I find myself spending several hours randomly browsing through the Zune marketplace. I'm trying out *way* more artists and songs. Example? Someone on the internal Zune mailing list gave a thumbs up to William Shatner's (yes - *that* William Shatner) 'Has Been'. That's an album I would have never risked money on - but guess what - it's actually quite nice.
The closest analogy I can come to the exploring I do is how we browse through Wikipedia - where you click on an article and find yourself reading a totally unrelated article a couple of hours later.
If the Zune marketplace gains popularity, I'm willing to bet that we would see some interesting changes in how artists become popular. When you have to pay nothing to try out a new artist or a new album, it removes ton of 'impedance'.
Finding rare songs
I went crazy this morning on ZunePass downloading old Tamil and Hindi movie songs from ZunePass. My Tamilian readers will understand why I'm so excited about getting songs from movies like 'Mr.Bharath' or Duet or more recent movies like Bombay. The selection of world music, atleast the Indian section, is quite deep and is very up-to-date.
I can hear a lot of folks (especially all my college friends reading this post) saying "You already get this from Bittorrent". Apart from the legal aspect and quality aspect, you're going to have a lot of trouble finding seeds for rare or unpopular content.
Under the right circumstances, DRM isn't so bad
There. I said the unthinkable. Here are the limits the Zune DRM puts on you
- You can listen to your music on three given machines at any time, For me, that's my home machine, my work machine and my laptop. I stream content from my home machine (over UPnP) to my XBox 360 hooked up to my home theater system.
- You can take it on your Zune device if you have one
- You lose access to your music once you stop paying the subscription fee. Of course, if you wanted to, there's an option to buy the song outright as well (ala iTunes or Amazon's mp3 store)
I've been using it for a week now and I don't find any of it limiting. The biggest blocker for a lot of people will be lack of native Mac or Linux support but I guess Parallels/Bootcamp/Fusion can help out in that regard. Another big blocker is that these songs don't work with iPods - so you'll have to listen to these songs from your computer alone or get a Zune. As I've found out in the last one week, the new Zunes aren't bad at all.
This made me think - is all DRM evil? Without DRM, there's really only one business model - buying each song or album. DRM, *implemented correctly*, lets you 'rent' content and doesn't necessarily mean a bad user experience. I have a feeling that there are a lot of people out there who will be happier with the renting model (due to the dramatically lower prices) for some forms of content.
'The social' works
Finding songs and artists to listen to based on what your friends are listening turns out to be an exceptionally good model. In my case, a lot of my friends are doing the same sort of exploration I talked about above so I get to reap the benefits of their effort. At the top of this post, you can see my Zune card with a live updated list of the songs I listen to, my favorites, etc.
It's incredibly cheap
I've already downloaded over 1000 songs in the short time I've had a Zune. I'm sure I'm going to get several thousand more over the next year or so. Paying $1 or so per song for thousands of songs would be *very expensive* when compared to paying a flat $15 for per month .
bye the way do u really listen to Mr.Bharat songs ? :)
When is this being rolled out outside North America? In India I have a hard time finding the hardware leave aside getting the Zune pass. Apple isn't here yet either - but hey at least the hardware is readily available and they don't block you altogether based on the IP :)
For the particular genre of Indian music you mention, 15 dollars ~ 600 Rs. per month buys you as much or even more music these days here. Most companies are doing legal MP3 CDs of old songs and even new movies cost peanuts just 2-3 months later (ATM sells for 30 Rs. *legally*). A 3 audio CD combo of Bombay, Duet and Sangamam set me off by a grand sum of 45 Rs. Not to mention I don't have to worry about Microsoft pulling the plug if the division starts making losses. Look at what happened to MSN Music or play for sure - once bitten twice shy.
Let's just say it'll be interesting to see how much of your music still plays just 2 years from now :)
I think all of us need to get over our knee jerk reaction to DRM. Like I said, it gives the consumer options other than buying things outright.
@deepak
- The outside North America thing. Yes, this sucks but this is no different from iTunes (see the legalese at the bottom of http://www.asia.apple.com/itunes/download/ ).
- I used the Indian music as an example. Most of the content I downloaded wasn't Indian and would have cost me around $1 to buy. I would have had to pay more than $1K to get the songs I've got in the past week - which makes no sense for songs I listen to a few times whenever the fancy grabs me.
Let's say I get 5K songs this year - a conservative estimate given my downloading history. Instead of paying $5K, I will be paying $180 for the entire year. You can do the math of how much that costs me per song. Even if the really improbable happens and Zune disappears tomorrow, I lose nothing - I've gotten more than my fair share of value for money.
As for the Tamil song example, what you did is physically impossible to do for me from here in the US so your argument really isn't valid. I would also challenge you to go through my Zune card and get any of the non-Indian songs I've listened to at the same prices.
I would be surprised if you found a legal way to build my music collection for a price in the same ballpark - my 5K song scenario costs me only $1800 for *10* years.
If your only argument is based on Zune disappearing (which is no different from iTunes disappearing, btw), that's pretty weak.
I'll grant you the cost working out cheaper for international music. As for my Indian music example being Physically "impossible" for you, have a friend take you to an Indian grocery store near by ;-). The Zune pass is more impossible for me relatively speaking.
"if your only argument is based on Zune disappearing (which is no different from iTunes disappearing, btw), that's pretty weak." Incidentally, it is not. If I stop buying songs from Apple my purchased songs in iTunes don't stop working. If you end your zune pass subscription, your collection goes kaput. I don't have a monthly liability to apple to keep listening to music I've paid for. I was betting on you ending your subscription before Zune pass going out of business ;-). That said, lets face the market reality here for a moment - 2 million+ customers is a much smaller number than 100 million+ customers. I don't think the fear of Zune shutting shop is weak or in the light of recent MSN Music shutdown even improbable.
I understand that the hardware is a blocker in India. Assume that these are like the early days of the iPod where you needed someone to get it from abroad. I'm pretty sure it'll only be a matter of time before it is fixed
Your argument about iTunes isn't true - you need the iTunes server to authorize new machines. You'll be hosed unless you plan on using the same machine for a few decades :)
Let's set the hardware aside and look at the numbers
Your monthly 'liability' to Microsoft is around $15. That number stays flat irrespective of your music consumption. The bigger the music fan you are, the cheaper it becomes for you. I know people who have 10K+ songs, most of them illegal. They could enjoy the same music *legally* for $180 a year.
The numbers for the same kind of music collection built on iTunes are in a totally different ballpark all together.
If you're willing to pay Apple $5K to get 5000 songs, why wouldn't you want to pay $180 per year for the exact same? The math says that it'll take you over *2 decades* for the Zune subscription to become more expensive for you and the more songs you add, the cheaper it gets.
The MSN folks didn't lose their music - they explicitly had the right to make CD copies. Painful but they didn't lose access
Let's say the Zune goes kaput after one year. For my example 5K collection, you would have paid *4 cents* per song. That seems pretty fair to me.
Btw, if you're comparing ratios, 2 million Zunes to iPod's 100 million is very close to Mac's global marketshare ratio when compared to Windows PCs (around 4%). I don't think we worry about Apple pulling the plug on the Mac, do we? :)
In Zune world, I'll have to use the same machine for decades *and* fork out 15$/month.
And both iPods (and increasingly iPhones which are identical to iPods for purpose of our discussion here) + Macs are Apple's core businesses. Zune is yet another Microsoft experiment in gaining foothold in consumer market. That 2% Mac marketshare gets at least 50% of apple's focus/budgets. Not the same with Zune. If MED keeps bleeding, this is the first thing they are shutting down.
I've lost music because people shut shop (I was a sony ATRAC3 Net MD early adopter) and this is what makes me check the credentials of a shop selling me DRM music. Zune Pass has a long way to go.
Now assuming Macs were to have their plugs pulled, the tracks I purchase on Mac work on Windows :).
The only way I am comfortable paying 15$ a month if I look at this service as a path between radio and owning the music. No thanks, I'd rather listen to satellite radio. Music I want to carry, I'd rather own for good.
You have to approach this from a psychological angle, not a rational angle. You could argue that Apple was sneakier / smarter at this than Microsoft.
After using the service for a while you may get hooked and notice that the benefits outweigh the cost, but you will most likely not get there. The entry barrier is much higher than you allude to, not because it's expensive but because it rubs (current) human psychology the wrong way.
: 10:17 AM, May 31, 2008 : 10:22 AM, May 31, 2008Good point on the psychology part. I think that was the underlying issue in the back and forth with Deepak
Either you have access to the digital data - then you can, for example, use an external digital/analog converter (most HiFi enthusiasts use one). This means you can produce digital copies by connecting a DAT recorder instead of an external d/a converter -> DRM dead.
Or you don't have access to the digital data, because you want make it more difficult to circumvent DRM (for example, by encapsulating all the data decrypting and d/a conversion in hardware, because hacking that is too much work to do at home over the weekend); this means less features, because you can not even connect your own d/a converter.
Plus, you can still make an analog copy -> DRM dead. ONE analog copy, if done right, means virtually no loss in sound quality (MP3 & co aren't that much high-end anyway, so I think that one analog copy is the smallest problem...).
You just do one d/a -> a/d conversion, DRM gone, and you can make as many digital copies of the resulting data as you want, without any further loss of quality.
So I think, DRM is really a misfeature that introduces more problems than it solves.
: 6:52 AM, June 03, 2008 : 4:28 AM, June 04, 2008<< Home
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