Scoring with Zune, Part 3 – Sampling Music

In my previous post I talked about the many steps I go through to find new music and whether the new Zune and Zune marketplace would simplify it at all. It turns out that Zune does have some nice features for finding music through their Zune.net community but, like all the other services, it's still woefully lacking in many respects. In this section I'll see there are any advantages to using Zune to browse and sample music.

You can look at all the recommendations and favorite lists you want. Skim all the top 10 charts and suss out who's generating interest but, as we all know, the only thing that matters is if *you* like what you hear. Obviously, how do you know if you like it unless you listen to it? In the digital age of music it's expected that we're able to sample before we "buy." For the consumer this is a huge benefit. It wasn't long ago that we all paid $12.00, $15.00 sometimes $20.00 for a song because you had to buy it along with the 10 or 12 other songs that came on the album. You had no ability to either, buy the song individually (no one ever bought singles did they?) or, sample the other tracks before you bought it. We all wished at some point that we could have listened to the other songs because, in a lot of cases, we probably wouldn't have bought the whole album. Now, it is an expected part of the buying process. But along with the benefit comes the burden. Now we literally have to sift through millions of songs.

This is such a fundamental part of the digital music experience that I can't believe how poorly the market handles it. It's critical (at least for me) to have access to an artist's body of work and listen to tracks in their entirety. A typical song is about 3-4 minutes. The dynamics of a song can change dramatically over that time. What good is a 30 second clip of the beginning of a song when 20 seconds of it is an intro? For this reason it's almost a nonstarter if the product doesn't offer some sort of subscription service. Now I know there are a lot of people out there that, for some reason, think that a music subscription is somehow like leasing. And, for some reason, are totally repulsed by the idea of not "owning" their music. For those that feel that way – good on yah. You might want to check out the economics of it before you get too comfortable with the position. As for me, I look at it as a license to try any car on the lot, for as long as I want, whenever I want. If I find that I just can't live without it and that it's worth the additional cost of maintenance and storage then I can just put down the money and buy it out right. A subscription service isn't a lease, it's an all access pass.

Up till now the only real choice was Rhapsody. First, because they were the only subscription service on the block and second, because they offer more music than any other service (I believe I-Tunes may have closed the gap but it's only been recently). For some reason (I'm guessing a combination of licensing rights and idiocy) iTunes still doesn't have any sort of subscription service. However, Zune does. Of all the things that people may choose to cite as a short coming of the product, this is clearly, and without question not one of them. It is the single reason why, as much as I may dislike the overall product, I will give up my iPod and use the new Zune.

I have had a Realone/Rhapsody account since 1999 and don't see how or why I would ever part with it. I have always been content with doing the majority of my listening in front of my computer because this is where I spend the majority of my time. If I needed to take it with me, I'd find ways to make that happen. Apple actually owes a lot of my purchases to Real. Limewire and WinMX also owe a lot of activity to Rhapsody as well because iTunes didn't carry the full catalog that Real did. The device option that Rhapsody offered was never that appealing for some reason, don't ask me why. But the Zune experience is actually really good in this regard.

The Zune Pass, Marketplace and Device integration is actually great. It's a totally seamless experience. If you buy a new device and sign up for Zune Pass within about an hour you'd be able to download all of your favorite albums. Even without the device sync capabilities just the ability to skim though music on my own terms is so much better than what iTunes offers. Unfortunately, the only shortcoming at this point is that you only have access to about 2 million songs, far less than Rhapsody and iTunes. So, although in my opinion this makes the product my default choice, I still rely on other services to sample other works.

Rhapsody is still far and above the best subscription product from a pure streaming perspective. They have the best interface, more content and better placement of artists than any other service. They also have an editorial staff that is much more in touch with current trends and directions in music than most mainstream sources I've seen (AOL Music is surprisingly good as well). You can see this in how their radio stations are programmed and the content in their main sections. Although most of the music I'll get from them I'll only listen to when at home, many times it leads me to an artist's website or MySpace page where I can download a few tracks and sync up with my device. From a purely selfish perspective my dream is that Microsoft would buy Real. I wouldn't want to speculate on any particular aspects of the business value for fear of a thousand things but… think of what kind of product Zune would be if you had Real's library and experience combined with Microsoft's money and influence. And that's all I have to say about that…

As for other sources, I mentioned Pandora, Last.fm, AOL Radio and others in my previous post about finding music. Clearly, these are all great ways of sampling except with limited control on your part. Again though, none of the services today integrate any of the more advanced analytical playlist generators into the product. However, Real does do a great job building artist radio streams that typically do give a good view of the artist's sub-genre. It would be great to see Microsoft incorporate some sort of equivalent of either of the two features in the next version of Zune marketplace.

An increasingly effective way of sampling without control is also through podcasts, also mentioned in the previous post and Zune does now support this (Real does not). Podcasts are a great way of finding and sampling niche music. It may be surprising that I'll mention terrestrial radio in this regard as well. Radio is generally regarded as mainstream but something that has come on the seen recently called Low Power FM stations changes this. These would have been "pirate radio" in the past but now the FCC has developed a program for individuals to create community broadcast stations that operate in a narrow set of frequencies. I mention this because much of our musical tastes are very much regionalized. Country, Urban, Rock, etc. are all associated with certain places as much as they are with certain styles and communities. Many times the best music is local music and these new LPFM stations are becoming great avenues for discovering that because they are targeted specifically at the community. Take a look to see if any of come online in your area. Or better yet, maybe start your own.

In all sampling, in this case the process of listening to as much as you can before you commit, is about ease of access and number of choices. From a pure digital perspective subscription services offer the best combination of the two. For this reason, I think Zune offers the best value because, although the selection may be less, the device integration is great and at least they give you the option unlike iTunes. As I mentioned, for this reason alone I'm going to switch to using the new Zune. Now the question is what happens if Apple offers a subscription service?

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