Idolator

Today, Microsoft officially announced the specs for the Zune, the portable media device that they're hoping will loosen Apple's tight grip on the digital media market. Our gadget-crazed brother Gizmodo has the specifics on the launch — the Zune's two biggest selling points are its three-inch color screen and its wireless capabilities, which will allow users to send music files back and forth between each other. Beamed music will have a shelf life of "three days or three plays," which seems to be just long enough to allow a user to either totally get sick of a song or totally be convinced to buy it from the Zune-branded store, the Zune Marketplace.

If it seems that all your favorite music blogs are a little Zuned out this afternoon, there's a reason why.

In a move that makes us wonder if the Zune team is a bit more savvy than we normally give Microsoft credit, influential MP3 bloggers were flown out for a Zunetastic junket. Stereogum's lengthy analysis, which went up at the stroke of noon ET, does an excellent job of breaking down the Zune's pros (the screen, the beaming capability) and cons (the only size available is 30GBand the price tag is $300), while My Old Kentucky Blog notes that blogosphere faves Cansei de Ser Sexy and Band of Horses will be among the artists integrated into the Zune's branding.

As Stereogum notes, Microsoft seems to be going for the "community" angle with the Zune, from the aforementioned song-beaming to the music-blogger appeasing roster (will Cansei de Ser Sexy really move more than five or six units?). Which all sounds one-world groovy until you realize that portable music-listening—unlike, say, playing a video game—is a pretty solitary exercise; for example, "can I beam you this song?" really doesn't work as a pickup line, especially when the person you're trying to pick up has "Ring the Alarm" blaring out of tightly affixed headphones.

If anything, though, the initial problems with the Zune won't lie in its it's-all-good marketing strategy; it's the limitations of the hardware. The lack of version 1.0 options—the Zune won't be compatible with iTunes or Apple, it's only available in 30 GB, and it comes with a steeper-than-an-iPod price—still makes the iPod a more attractive alternative. Unless they recruit one of the remaining digital-store holdouts—The Beatles, Led Zeppelin—to the Zune Marketplace, it looks like Microsoft will retain its underdog status in the portable media player realm until it launches a second-generation version.

Microsoft Zune Gets Officially Announced [Gizmodo]
Stereogum's Sneak Peak At Zune [stereogum]