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One of the supposed selling points of Microsoft’s imminently launching portable media player, the Zune, is its wireless capabilities–Zune users who want to act as “influencers” can send songs to their similarly deviced pals. Today, Gizmodo heard talk of Microsoft upping the sharing-songs ante–essentially giving users Zune Marketplace credits if songs they’ve beamed out are later purchased. Hmm. Well, for one thing, as some Gizmodo commenters pointed out, this idea sounds suspiciously like that scam where Bill Gates pays you if you send enough e-mails to your friends. But it’s also banking heavily on a specious premise. As we noted yesterday, Microsoft hasn’t made distribution deals with any of the major labels yet–and there are less than three weeks to go until launch. Will the possibility of free CSS songs be enough to turn Zune owners into song-pushers? Or will people hold off until they can trade in their salesmanship skills for free Gwen Stefani tracks–if they decide to go over to the brown side at all?
Rumor: Zune To Pay You For Sharing Songs? [Gizmodo]
Previously: Idolator’s Coverage Of The Zune
I heard that if you beam a song and it later gets purchased, then they fly you out to Seattle and wine and dine you for the night.
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What? What’d I say?
One of the mistakes Microsoft is making is that they’re assuming this “tastemaker” class is going to be seeing free music and going out to do their mp3 blog esque thing with all their Zune owning friends. They’re missing out on the fact that they’re ONLY courting the mp3blogger type and the “musical proletariat” are still buying iPod or Creative or HP players. The only selling point, then, to the Zune is that my jerkwad friends can send me songs that I got bored of ten months ago, before the US licensing kicked in.
I don’t care what they say! I will go to the brown side! But maybe when it’s Zune 2.0. After all, I waited for an iPod, I can wait for the Zune to be better!
I was planning on being an iPod for Halloween, but maybe the more timely thing would be to be a Zune player. People might wonder why I’m a brown box with a picture of CSS though …