We > Me: Joe Morel's Blog : Zune

ZunePass - What Have You Downloaded?

joemorel — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 20:53:38 GMT

If you're a Zune owner, I hope that you at least tried out the 2 week free trial subscription to the ZunePass service that allows you to download as many tracks as you want from the Zune service in a "rental" fashion--as long as you keep paying your fee ($14.99/month) you can keep listening to the songs. To me, as somebody who loves a diversity of music and doesn't own very many CDs, a subscription service is the best way to discover new music and enjoy old favorites that I'm not really willing to shell out a $1 a song to listen to.

I use multiple PCs to listen to music. Here at work, I primarily listen to music on my desktop. At home, I have a Vista Media Center machine that is the machine that my Zune is actually synced to. That means that sometimes I'm downloading music here at work, and sometimes I'm downloading it at home. If only there was a way to get all of the music on the same machine...

Well...it is. There's a feature in the Zune software that allows you to see a history of all of your downloaded tunes and "restore" your library. This will allow you to redownload everything you've ever downloaded in the past. Here's how:

Open up the Zune software and Sign In to your account.
Click on the orange "Person" icon at the top of the screen and select "Account Management".
The resulting page is a bit button crazy, but the second button from the bottom is "Restore Library". Select it.
By clicking "Begin Scan" on the resulting page, you'll get a list of everything you've ever downloaded.
You can use the checkboxes to only grab the songs you want, and then go ahead and select "Restore".
Tada! Your tracks will begin downloading in the background. Selecting the "Active Downloads" from under the "Marketplace" node on the sidebar will get you a list of your status.

Pretty cool, huh? (Yes, yes, an online library a la Rhapsody or Yahoo Music would be cooler...)

Fixing the Zune in Five Steps?

joemorel — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 03:46:41 GMT

As you probably know if you follow this blog regularly, I'm a big digital music fan that's been trying to move from iTunes to a Microsoft-based platform for over a year. I bought a Zune right after the Zune's release in November, and I've generally been happy with it.

Today Engadget posted a short piece on five things that would improve the Zune against the iPod. I agree with some of the points in the article, like releasing firmware that fixes the DRM-skipping problem and adding podcasting support, but don't think that the list really does much to help differentiate the Zune from its competitor(s). Here's five things I'd love to see with the Zune (or future Zunes) that would help me recommend it over an iPod to a friend:

Make My Zune Flash-Based and Nano-Sized - Let's face it, very few people really listen to all 30 gigs of music they have. In fact, it's impossible to listen to all of the songs in one day. I remember reading somewhere that the average music collection on an iPod is around 1,000 songs--or about 4 gigs. Apple realized it with the Mini and the Nano--smaller is better. And videos? Really? Do most people really care?
Dump the WiFi...give me Bluetooth - WiFi is a PIA on mobile devices. The only mobile device I've used with great WiFi support is the Nintendo DS, and that's because they have a great input device. Why do I really want to share music with other people on the bus? I really don't want to listen to what the creepy guy that's muttering to himself is listening to. What I would like is wireless headphones and wireless syncing to my computer. Bluetooth 2.0 can give me this. And...wait...you could use Bluetooth to send songs to each other as well.
Push the Subscription Music! - I love subscription music. For $14.99/month, I can listen to over a million songs. I can listen to the new Shins album without buying it or waiting for a radio DJ to select tracks off of it to force feed me. I can listen to that old Steve Winwood song "Valerie" without having to actually spend $0.99 to own it. I can listen to playlists of stuff that I might not like to see if I do. We recently used the Zune client at a birthday party. It was amazing--you could literally cue up everyone's favorite songs. Why we are marketing people squirting songs to each other while they are snowboarding instead of showing them how the Zune offers a seamless subscription experience is beyond me.
Let's Define "Social" Before We Join It - The WiFi sharing is social. Even here in Redmond though, there just aren't enough people to squirt music to. What's truly social though is the Internet. Why not allow people to upload their playlists and ratings to a central "ZuneCenter"? A new, smarter Zune client software could compare your playlists and ratings against thousands of other people, and recommend a playlist. If you have a Zune Pass, this playlist can contain songs you've never even thought about downloading. Every day, a new music experience is synced to your Zune, waiting for you to try music that people like you have implicitly recommended. Now that's social. Maybe you start flagging songs in this playlist. The software might recognize that the songs you are flagging are all from a few discrete people. You can use the Zune software to browse their collections...wow there's a lot of potential here...
SDK - Yes, yes, I know. Microsoft wants to keep the Zune ecosystem "pure". Let's face it though...the Zune software is missing some major pieces that I should be able to download plugins for. Providing an SDK for people to programmatically manipulate the library, create playlists, download songs from the Zune Marketplace, and generally extend the software would enhance the Zune experience much more than it would detract from it. You can't use the iTunes/iPod closed-system example here--iTunes has had an SDK for a long time that have enabled very cool plugins.

What feature do you think the Zune should add to become more competitive, or is Engadget right on?

Zune Software Shuffle - Not Random At All?

joemorel — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 02:51:00 GMT

I'm almost positive that I'm not crazy here...well, I think so at least. During the day here at work, I listen to music if I'm doing something on my computer by myself in my office, I'm usually listening to music. Since I got a Zune, I've been using the Zune client software to listen to random playlists at work. I'm a picky person about music, so I'm a pretty heavy user of the "next track" button. I've noticed a very strange behavior when I use the "next track" button alot--the software will start playing the exact same songs I just skipped...in the same order. In true bug-reporting style, here are the repro steps:

Play a large playlist in the Zune client app (mine's nearly 1,700 songs).
Listen to a few songs, then get fed up because you really don't want to listen to anymore Beatles today.
Hit the "Next Track" button a few times until you find a suitable song, like Ben Folds Five's "Philosophy".
Listen to the song, and then notice that the app is trying to play the Beatles again!
Hit "Next Track" over and over again, and notice that the software even plays "Philosophy" again before it starts suggesting new songs.

Am I the only one that's seeing this? Anybody?!

Moving iTunes Library to Windows Media Player – The Final Word

joemorel — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 03:34:00 GMT

I've gotten lots and lots of questions about my previous couple of posts about how to move your music library from Apple's iTunes to Windows Media Player over the past couple of months. Jerry Leynes of Jacksonville, Florida has cleaned up and augmented my posts along with a few others to create a definitive guide to getting your library moved over, along with clarifying text that I was missing. Jerry's text below is about how to move the music all the way from iTunes to the miniSD card for his Sprint Pocket PC, but the instructions should work for any Windows Media Player compatible MP3 player (including Creative Zen, iRiver MP3 players, Toshiba Gigabeats, etc.) Thanks to Jerry for the well-written and very useful post!

In Jerry's words (please note this is not for songs purchased from the iTunes Music Store!):

Converting iTunes music files to MP3 format, transferring these to Windows Media Player 11 using MusicBridge freeware, Synching these into Sprint's PPC-6700 Pocket PC

I have just finished a three hour process of doing this and am now listening to my former iTunes music listings for iPod on my Pocket PC, so I know the process works:

Download and Install MusicBridge (Freeware): http://www.download.com/MusicBridge/3000-2141_4-10530688.html?tag=lst-0-1

1. Open up iTunes.

2. Click on Edit, Preferences, Advanced, Importing .

3. Change your "Import Using" drop-down to "MP3 Encoder".

4. Exit from your preferences and go to the main library view in iTunes. You may want to sort all of your music by "File Type".

5. Highlight all of your unprotected AAC files. (You can not convert or play songs you purchased from the iTunes Music Store because of a lock Apple is forced to put on the files called "FairPlay".)

6. Right-click, and select "Convert Selection to MP3".

7. It'll take awhile…be patient.

When all the files have converted to MP3 format: Close iTunes.

Music Bridge does not actually add songs to your Windows Media Player (WMP) library…it only synchs the metadata about those songs (song names, ratings, playlists, etc.) Before you use MB you need to actually add the song files from iTunes to your WMA Library. Following instructions are for WMP 11, but may work for WMP 10.

Open WMP.
Hit F3.
You get an "add to library" drop down box with a list of folders that WMP is monitoring for new media files. If you don't see this list, click on "advanced Options" then click on ADD Navigate to the root folder holding your iTunes music files. This path will ususally be c:\My Documents\My music\itunes\itunes music.
Click OK. WMP will scan the folder and all its subfolders and add those music files to your library. Any AAC files and music purchased from the iTunes Music Store will be skipped.
When the import is finished exit WMP and open Music Bridge From the "Synch from iTunes" box chose "All Data" confirm this when asked: Do you really want to….."
Watch and wait as your data is synced.
When this is done open WMP and check to see that the files are indeed there.
Next connect your PPC to its sync cradle and start the sync program (for MP3 players, just connect your MP3 player to the PC and turn it on.) It will look for the new files and load them onto your miniSD storage card (you must have this to load music files on because there is not enough internal memory in the PPC to hold the files. Strongly recommend the 2GB miniSD card. You must set up a sync relationship between WMP and your miniSD memory card. Just follow the instructions on your PPC to do this…its easy When the sync is completed open Windows Media on the PPC and touch "menu".
Select: Library and hit menu again, select "Update Library"
All your music files will be transferred onto the "Storage Card" in your PPC.
To play music, now open WM in the PPC, go to Library, select Storage Card, select the album or artist or genre you want to play and hit play.
It works!

Note: Since I've written this, I've left Microsoft. If you'd like to contact me directly with questions about this, please feel free to visit my website at http://whostheboss.net.

Zune from the POV of a Gadget Junkie

joemorel — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 22:55:00 GMT

Anybody who's ever been over my house knew that this was going to happen, and it wasn't going to take long. Given that I have a week here of laid-back-ness here in my hometown of Medina, Ohio, it seemed like a perfect time to graduate to joining the hoard of other Microsofties that have been reviewing the Zune. I purchased a black Zune at my local Office Max right before I left town. The first thing that was interesting is that although the employees there knew that they had Zunes in stock, they couldn't really explain to me why I would want one. I explained that I was a Microsoftie, and then chatted with the salesperson in the store for a few minutes, trying to outline the key reasons why somebody would want to buy a Zune over an iPod (in my words: bigger screen, subscription music, wireless beaming of songs, and a commitment from the team to continue to add new cool things to the player.) He then asked why this wasn't on the homepage of http://www.zune.net, and how all he saw when he was there was a bunch of indie bands and not much on what they were trying to sell. I agreed, and mentioned how I had to go to Engadget to figure out that his store was even selling Zunes. Hey, marketing--I know we want to sell "cool"--but we are also trying to sell 30 GB MP3 players with wireless on them. Some people might want to know where to buy them... :)

Anyways, I think you've seen plenty of articles about the player itself, so I'm not going to get into it. I love the interface, and the screen is a pleasure to use. I haven't beamed any songs (surprise, surprise), but I'm loving having album art taking up the whole screen and having a *very* responsive UI (the Gigabeat was prone to little 3 second freezes.) My major qualm right now is that the album art is all fuzzy and ugly--it's downloading and upscaling a 200x200 image in a 240x240 space, and it's not a pretty result. Hopefully we'll see this fixed with a software update in the next month or so.

What I want to concentrate on is the client-side, desktop Zune software. It's very obviously a skinned version of Windows Media Player 11, but it feels much more responsive. When I click the Zune icon on my desktop, the Zune app shoots up in a couple of seconds. Windows Media Player was notorious for making me wait 15-20 seconds on my Core Duo iMac (inside of Windows XP), so this was a welcome change. The software works as advertised, supporting "Auto-Playlists", rating, and album art surfing. Sweet! The real beauty in the software is that this is the first time I've used a subscription service and had it work 100% reliably, out-of-the-box, with my player. Maybe this whole closed-ecosystem thing isn't so bad after all. I signed up for my two-week Zune pass trial, and downloaded a bunch of playlists from the Zune marketplace. Damn, this was awesome. Hey--here's a custom "Ella Fitzgerald" playlist...click "Download", and voila--it's in my library, as a playlist. Done. End of story. The next time I plug in my Zune, that playlist is sitting there waiting for me. Wow. If you've never experienced this all-you-can-eat style of listening to music, you really ought to try it. It's like being given the keys to a Virgin Megastore (yea, it's still missing some more obscure indie stuff), and being told--the CDs are all yours--have fun! For $15 a month, this is a no-brainer.

After playing with the store and the player, I still echo Josh's comments--the "Welcome to the Social" Zune, should, well, have more social features that even iTunes supports. The most obvious one is that we need a way for users to upload their own playlists, collaboratively weight them, and have the ability to subscribe to RSS-style feeds of your "music network" playlists. Maybe I want to be kept up-to-date on what Sara is listening to down the hall. I want that feature. Maybe I want to find Joe Morel number 2, somebody on the other side of the world that just happens to like the same stuff as me--I want to know when he finds a new album he thinks is sweet. Coupled with a $15 Zune Pass, these features are super-compelling, and in my opinion, more social than beaming a song at a time to other users on the bus.

Another social feature that would be great is the ability to add commentary to songs inside of the Zune Marketplace. When I'm listening to a song, one of my "Now Playing" views, instead of trippy visualizations (does anybody use those?) would be the ability to view reviews and commentary that other Zune users have uploaded about the songs, like blog comments or a forum thread. You could then post yourself, and be further drawn into the community of Zune users. (For example, Jeremy makes a very insightful post about the newest Ben Folds album that I really identify with. I then click on Jeremy's name, and can browse his playlists, and, boom--I've found a new music influencer.)

The possibilities of these features are really limitless, and I truly believe that the Zune is the first device that's truly going to allow this to happen, given the fact that it's the first player to have a reliable subscription service attached to it. So, to the Zune team--I'm assuming we can expect all of these community features implemented by Christmas, right? :) Maybe you could call Santa and see if any elves are any good at C++...

Zune Questions Answered (For Josh…)

joemorel — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 00:25:00 GMT

Josh just posted a bunch of questions on his blog about the Zune. I don't have all of the answers, but he should have known that I was going to jump all over his post. Here you go, boss:

About Windows Media Center Integration

Q: Can Zune Marketplace purchased songs be streamed through media center extenders? What about songs from the subscription service?

A: Jeremy and I tested playing a DRMed Zune file in Windows Media Player today. It worked. That means that Zune files should play just fine through Media Center--you just need to setup WMP to monitor your Zune folders. I haven't tested this yet, but I'm confident that it will work (I've been able to play DRMed files on my extender as long as I have recent licenses for them.) Just a bit of advice though—Xbox 360 supports all media sharing now, and supports the Zune software out of the box. It's not as pretty of an interface, but you'll be better off using the Xbox 360 interface rather than the Media Center Extender.

Q: Does the Zune automatically sync with Media Center video and TV recorded content?

A: The short answer is no. You can set the Zune software to monitor folders for new video content though, so if you use a program to automatically transcode your DVR-MS files into WMV files, just tell the Zune to monitor the output folder, and voila—you have recorded TV on your device. (By the way, if you've never tried this before, you should know that transcoding an MPEG to WMV takes about one minute for one minute of video on a mid-range Pentium 4. Don't expect to do a "quick sync" right before you walk out the door if you want to watch last night's Daily Show on the bus…)

Q: Does the Zune download and properly place Album art for your music libraries (already ripped) so that you can have good album art in Media Center?

A: Kinda. It uses the same stuff that WMP11 uses, which means that the album art stuff is spotty. It will probably scoop the art for about 65-70% of your albums. If you ripped the CD and used CDDB, the likelihood goes up. If you downloaded it from a "friend", it's highly likely that it won't work (the ID3 tag has to be correct.)

Random

Q: How has importing libraries and playlists form iTunes worked for you?

A: Gizmodo reports that the iTunes library synced over great, along with song ratings. Not sure about playlists, although if you have problems, it'll be with Smart Playlists, not standard ones.

Q: Can you use windows media connect or the zune software to stream music between multiple computers in the house?

A: The Zune software only supports sharing to an Xbox 360. Lame. Once again, if you

Q: Do you think the Zune.net site itself should actually be more… social? I was surprised that it didn't duplicate the forums and social networking services ala xbox.com. They could have had playlist sharing, Zunetag pics ala gamertag pics that show the last few bands I've played, etc. I can dream right?

A: The website is bad. Not only does it not have any community features (or good support features), but doesn't even help you find where to buy a Zune. Lame. What's really lame is the inability to create and share playlists from within the Zune software (iTunes has it) or the ability to store your "library" of Zune Pass songs online. That's a killer feature of other subscription services, such as Napster, Rhapsody, or Yahoo Music (URGE doesn't have it either…)

Q: How do you like yours so far?

A: I don't have one yet, I have a Gigabeat S, which is what the Zune was based on. I've been going back and forth about buying a Zune. If I do, it will be for the following reasons:

Zune Marketplace is the best subscription service I've seen performance-wise. It's fast, and using a Zune, I can actually be confident that the thing will work (unlike Napster and Yahoo Music, which are buggy beyond belief.)
The screen is beautiful. It's big, and that's great.
It's durable and light. I think it's a tad too big, but it isn't going to scratch like my whimpy iPod. Honestly, I should never have to buy a plastic case for a plastic device. Apple—the iPod's pretty, but a road warrior it is not.
The platform is only going to get better. Microsoft might not have everything correct right now, but I've seen the speeches, and we're determined to be the best in this market. The device has features (such as the WiFi) that aren't really important right now, but could really make the thing compelling in coming months. The software is only going to get better, and I believe that the integration between Windows, my Xbox 360, and my Zune is going to be great. (It's the officeàportableàliving room trifecta that I've been dreaming about for years, slowly morphing into reality…)

Oh, and Josh. If you want to, I'd be more than happy to spend your money to buy a Zune and better flesh out this blog entry… J