Microsoft has announced the "Zune", as their competitor to the iPod. Like the iPod, it will be integrated into future versions of Windows and be primarily be an MP3/Music player. Like the iPod, it is designed to be high portable and stylized to complement ones own personal sense of fasion. Like the iPod, it will work with a proprietary music store owned and operated by Microsoft.
Unlike the iPod, Microsoft is trying to integrate music sharing directly into the device. Using a WiFi signal, it will allow the connection of two Zune players to beam a song from an owner to a non-owner. Then the non-owner will be able to listen to the song up to 3 times in 3 days, and flag it for purchase the next time they log onto the Microsoft Music Store. There are concerns about the impact on battery life of such a design (keep in mind the new iPod Nano has a 24 hour battery life - as in 24 hours of playing music continuously!) but overall, it is seen as bringing something new to the marketplace.
The question is not whether enhanced song sharing is the Golden Goose of the next wave of digital music player sales. It is. It is exactly the technology that made Napster huge, and keeps many of the quasi-legal peer-to-peer networks operating today. People want to find new music from friends and trusted family, no longer trusting radio to play the best music (as opposed to the music they are most bribes to play). It is why "headphone sharing" has been huge among iPodders. In NYC it is not uncommon for an iPod user to swap out his headphones for a friends, to hear what is playing.
The question is whether Zune has the right method. The good: it appears to be simple to use, it protects music companies right (at least until it is hacked), and it does enable sharing. The bad: It won't be hard to hack to enable illegal sharing, and the "three time only" limitation will annoy more than it will "enable" and will not allow viral spreading of new music (i.e. I tell a friend, who tells a friend, who tells a friend, etc.) My gut says this is not the final solution, though I had to give Microsoft credit for trying something new and different.
What is the right way to share? Not sure. But I suspect it has to do with staying analog, rather than going digital. Imagine, if you will, an iPod with a built-in FM transmitter. The iPod broadcasts the open transmitter via a digital technology (maybe bluetooth, maybe something less power-hungry like RFID). Other iPods in the vicinity can sense the open transmitter, and request to hear what the listener is hearing. The iPod broadcasts in FM, the other iPod recieves in FM. Analog all the way. As it plays, the track info is passed via a digital medium (encoded in FM perhaps, or again that altenative I mentioned). The other iPodders can then record the stream in analog form, and play it back. They do not get digital quality, they do not get track names and artists embedded into the file, but they do get shared music. Then as they listen again and again, they can transmit to other iPods. And if the track names/artists are recorded as they play, they can be synced to i!
Tunes to flag them for later purchase. The music studios get a sudden proliferation of "radio stations" pumping out their tunes (free advertising) but still incentives for customers to buy the real thing.
Your thoughts?
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