Microsoft Updates Zune Subscription to Include Free Music

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Microsoft Updates Zune Subscription to Include Free Music …

Microsoft Updates Zune Subscription to Include Free Music … — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 16:17:00 GMT

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Microsoft Updates Zune Subscription to Include Free Music …

Microsoft Updates Zune Subscription to Include Free Music … — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 16:16:59 GMT

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re: Microsoft Updates Zune Subscription to Include Free Music

robertsjoe — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 10:03:26 GMT

Thanks for the post. All 10 Zune owners are happy to hear it.

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re: Microsoft Updates Zune Subscription to Include Free Music

subzerohitman721 — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 06:06:32 GMT

Well, I guess we should be keeping an eye on MT9 as the next digital audio format. Granted a whole lot of music would have to be recorded in this new format. We'll see when MPEG group meets in 2009.

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re: Microsoft Updates Zune Subscription to Include Free Music

chuckb84 — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 02:15:46 GMT

I've never liked subscription music, and based on the numbers, I'm not alone, because subscription music has utterly failed in the marketplace.

I would submit that this is not "subscription". "Rent to own" might be a better appellation. You rent a bunch of music and then own the ones you like. It amounts to a pre-purchase of roughly an album a month.

Call it what you like, this may be a viable business model. We'll see how consumers react. The biggest problem---and I don't mean this as a Microsoft critique, just a statement of reality---is that this business model could fail because Microsoft sells so few MP3 players. Still an interesting idea.

re: Microsoft Updates Zune Subscription to Include Free Music

mikegalos@msn.com — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 00:46:20 GMT

DRWAM

Now what they need to add is a "wishlist" for songs I want to buy next month when I have credits again...

re: Microsoft Updates Zune Subscription to Include Free Music

DRWAM — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 00:35:19 GMT

If you do the math, you pay for 10 songs each month at $1/song, and rent the subscription for $5/month, unless you forget to buy them. Almost like book of the month.

re: Microsoft Updates Zune Subscription to Include Free Music

joe-dokes — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 22:57:18 GMT

The failure of AAC outside of Apple has little to do with Apple's DRM and everything to do with the way AAC is licensed. Simply put the license for AAC is far more expensive than it is for WMA.

MS competed mostly on price and since it was ridiculously cheap to include a wma decoder most .mp3 players have done so. Since Apple never licensed the right to the DRM version of AAC, few .mp3 manufacturers bothered to license the non DRM AAC technology; because it would add about a dollar to the wholesale price of an .mp3 player.

In the long run I would argue this hurt non-Apple .mp3 manufactures since the default encoding in iTunes is AAC, thus even though most have actually bought few songs through iTunes, the vast majority of their music collection is encoded in AAC, and is therefore incompatible with the vast majority of .mp3 players.

MS and Sony have begun to include AAC decoding in their players making them far more compatible. Will AAC become as ubiquitous as .mp3? Well, as long as Manufactures are unwilling to pay about a dollar per license, I would say the answer is yes.

As far as the ability to keep ten songs a month, I would argue that this actually makes the rental model a lot more attractive. I've never been a fan of the rental model, (Subscription is in my view an entirely inaccurate term.) I've felt very strongly that it lacked sufficient value to be a good deal or even an acceptable deal for consumer.

Being able to keep ten songs a month adds far more value to the equation.

Regards

Joe Dokes

re: Microsoft Updates Zune Subscription to Include Free Music

Dipsh t Admin — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 22:11:41 GMT

That's a pretty impressive deal right there. It gives you the best of both worlds.

re: Microsoft Updates Zune Subscription to Include Free Music

johnpapola — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 21:36:40 GMT

This is pretty awesome. I wish iTunes would do this.

re: Microsoft Updates Zune Subscription to Include Free Music

mikegalos@msn.com — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 20:20:16 GMT

(oops)

That line should have been: The problem with MP3 vs AAC vs WMA vs [insert other format here] is that MP3 is now the universal standard and all the attempts to get something better accepted have been met with a lot of resistance.

re: Microsoft Updates Zune Subscription to Include Free Music

mikegalos@msn.com — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 20:16:33 GMT

johnbaxter

Actually, I was really just bringing up the metadata problem. I know that both Zune and iTunes do a bad job on classical fields but, from what I've been able to research, that's largely because the standard metadata formats do a bad job so they're stuck shoehorning what data they can into barely compatible fields.

The problem with MP3 vs AAC vs WMA vs [insert other format here] is that MP3 is now the universal standard and all the attempts to get something better accepted haven't been met with a lot of resistance. Apple's tying their AAC implementation so generally to their DRM implementation has probably killed AAC at least in name since the general perception is that AAC = Apple DRM. That's wrong, of course, but changing the perception might be impossible at this point and it may be simpler to just change the name of "real" AAC so the bad impression is gone.

Maybe Apple could launch a non-DRM "AAC Mojave"?