Microsoft: We Have a New MP3 Player Also
by John Paczkowski
Posted on September 9, 2008 at 4:28 AM PT
Zune’s focus is liveliness and youth. The buzz of the sound “Z” makes it one of the most energetic in the language. Lexicon’s studies of sound symbolism, conducted with hundreds of people in a variety of languages, have shown that word-initial “Z” scores very high for communicating attributes like “lively,” “daring,” and “fast.” The letter Z’s current popularity in respellings like “boyz” and “antz” lends a youthful irreverence. Even though it isn’t obviously derived from any real word, Zune could pass for a casual abbreviation, in the same way that ‘zza stood in for pizza with some people 10 years or so ago. Zune is clearly a fun kind of name.
That’s how David Placek, founder and CEO of Lexicon Branding, explained the etymology of Zune when Microsoft (MSFT) debuted the device in 2006. Ironically, he neglected to mention that “Z” also denotes the sound of sleeping or snoring and was often used as an insult in Shakespearean English, which would, perhaps, have been more appropriate given the market’s reaction to the device and the size of its share of the market with respect to Apple’s (APPL) iPod.
And sadly that’s still true today, though Microsoft continues to work doggedly to imbue Zune with the “youthful irreverence” to which Placek referred (although “irrelevance” is perhaps a better word here). Consider the third-generation Zune feature set Microsoft confirmed Monday evening: storage capacity of up to 120 gigabytes, wireless connectivity to the Zune Marketplace from any public Wi-Fi hotspot, and “Buy from FM,” a feature that allows Zune owners to identify and purchase songs they hear on the device’s FM radio. Those are nice enhancements. And while they’re sure to make Zune 3.0 more successful than its predecessors, it’s hard to see them helping Zune steal mindshare from the iPod, which controls about 71 percent of the digital media player market to Zune’s 4 percent, according to NPD Group.
The new blue-on-silver color scheme is a nice improvement over the UPS-brown/guano-green color palette to which we’ve become accustomed.
Comments
Wireless connection to zune marketplace is exactly the feature that really make wifi make sense. And buy from FM is actually quite cool. Assuming these new features are well executed, I will definitely get one!
Posted by John Mullinax at September 9th, 2008 at 6:49 amSome of the new features are intriguing but I have to admit that I don’t know anyone who has a Zune or had a conversation about it.
Posted by Ken Okel at September 9th, 2008 at 9:46 amI’m one of the 4%. I bought the Zune for the one feature that has existed for over a year, that differentiates it from an iPod and that no one ever seems to talk about. The Zune Pass. For $14.95 a month, I have unlimited download access to just about every artist, album or song you could want.
Hardware and feature wise, its fine. Its definitely not as slick as the ipod touch, but it works just fine. The PC software is very usable. Feature for feature itunes is more robust, but I don’t particularly miss anything.
Which leaves the music. Apple has a great model: spend hundreds on a piece of hardware that is simply an entry point for you spending multiple amounts of money on downloads from their store. My spend on music is the price of one album download a month. I probably download 10-15 albums a month. Sure if I ever stop my subscription I lose all my music, but I don’t mind that risk.
I’m not sure why its not more popular – and if Apple goes the subscription route, the Zune will die, but Apple has too much revenue on the line right with download revenue now so it will be a while.
Posted by Chris Locke at September 9th, 2008 at 1:48 pm@Chis Locke:
I’m quite sure that a lot of people that buy any of these devices load them with music they already own, ripped from CDs they have had for years. For those people (including myself) variations on subscription models make no difference.
I’m not the target market for these things, but I have no desire to be locked into a specific music service or DRM technology be it Apple’s or Microsoft’s.
$15 a month for “renting” music isn’t unique to Zune, I think Real has something similar as do othrs. Miss a payment and lose it all seems insane to me. You would be much better off (based on your 1 album a month) just downloading from Amazon.com (or even iTunes) and transfering unencrypted MP3s to your Zune (I assume that’s possible).
Posted by Mac Beach at September 10th, 2008 at 10:31 am