Familiar?

Apple’s recipe for success was simple, a top down approach: the device, the software, the place to get music, and the (demonic?) scheme to tie all these together- FairPlay DRM. Microsoft, rather  unsuccessfully copied that recipe a little later, and called it Zune. Even if more than 85% of PCs use Windows, Zune’s music player  market share is only 4% compared to iPod’s crushing 70%.

As expected,  there are three components in the Zune’s platform: the Zune player, the Zune Windows-only software and the Zune online services: Zune Marketplace and Zune Social. Oh, and let’s not forget the the Zune DRM. In this article I will take a look at Zune Software and Zune Marketplace. We’ll review the Zune hardware in a separate article later on, if possible.

Quick overview

Zune Software runs on XP and Vista and it is build on a variation of the Media Center UI Framework, and not WPF, as Microsoft probably wanted to eliminate the burden of installing the .NET 3.0 framework. A good choice.

The Zune software is a media player application that can be used to manage a Zune and stream content to a nearby XBOX 360. It supports MP3, AAC(.aac, .mp4, .m4a, .m4b, .mov), WMA for audio and MPEG4 ( .mp4, .m4v, .mov), H.264, WMV and ASF for video. It can also manage JPG pictures, but  this feature  is implemented just for syncing with the Zune player, so it is very limited in functionality. Like iTunes, it can rip and burn audio CDs.

Zune devices can only be managed using the Zune Software and no other media players are compatible with Zune software.  As Zune Marketplace is tightly integrated with the Zune Software, it  has also gone largely unnoticed.

Library management

Zune Software allows folder monitoring so whenever you drop files in the monitored folders they are automatically added to your collection. You can define folders for music, videos, pictures and podcasts from local or external drives. Sweet!  iTunes can replicate the same behavior only on the Mac using Folder Actions. The default location of the Zune library (songs downloaded from the Marketplace, podcasts and ripped CDs) can easily be changed, even from the first start-up screen.

Smart playlists are known in Zune as Autoplaylists. Unlike iTunes, where you can burn any playlist as an audio CD or MP3 Data CD, Zune Software has a dedicated burn playlists and you can burn it only as an audio CD.

At the bottom you can select the default playlist and any tracks dragged onto the playlist icon are added to that playlist. Another nice feature that iTunes did not implement properly is the Now Playing playlist.

It can automatically download album cover art and metadata for the content in the library or you can do it manually. It  does a good job at finding cover art, significantly better than iTunes.

Other than marking a song as favorite (the only functionality I see in this is  for the social extension since there is no favorites autoplaylist) or editing the metadata, there’s not much you can do.  In iTunes you had some more sophisticated options like specifying whether a song should be skipped when shuffling or the start and end time if there’s just a part that you like.

You can rate songs but it doesn’t have a five star rating systems like iTunes,  just a love/ don’t love heart symbol.

Searching brings results both from your collection and also from the Zune Marketplace, nicely divided in to two panes. This would be a view that I’d like to see in iTunes.

Look and feel

The look and feel of a software used for managing, discovering and listening to music is very important for the user experience and could be considered a deciding factor in buying a music player. In my opinion, the Zune Software is a worthy contender for the “Best Jukebox experience” title.

Interface

Zune has a unique, beautiful, clean(!), user-friendly and intuitive interface, which makes it far more attractive than any other media player I’ve used before. Even with the Cover Flow and the new Grid View, when compared to Zune, iTunes still looks too much like a spreadsheet.

The nested-tab navigation is remarkably easy to use and seems so natural you wonder how you managed to live with out it.  In the upper left corner you will find the main tabs: Collection, Marketplace and Social as well as a tab for Zune devices when connected or CD when inserted.  Each main tab contains nested-tabs to display different  content. For instance, under the Collection tabs there are tabs for media stored on your computer: Music, Videos , Pictures, Podcasts and Channels.

The third level of nested-tabs allows you to choose the type of view you prefer. For Music you get Artists, Genres, Albums, Songs and Playlists. Each of this view has an uncluttered layout and they all look attractive, but I find the Artists view the most useful.

Themes

Zune Software does not support themes but  you can change the background. You get seven different backgrounds, the first being completely white, and the rest having some washed up colors on the same white background, but interesting non the less.

Now Playing

Zune doesn’t come with a true full-screen view or a mini-player but  it has a fabulous Now Playing screen, that tiles album art across the application window.

If your graphic card supports it and if you enabled the Premium graphics rendering with animation option, the Now Playing screen fills up with high quality photos of the current artist and animated bio info. I prefer this to any iTunes Visualizer.

Podcasts

Podcast support in Zune is decent.  No complains or new features here.

Music discovery features

Zune comes with three interesting music discovery services: Mixview, Channels and Picks.

Mixview

Mixview puts at the center the current artist (selected or playing), and flowing around it,  squares representing works of  the same artist, related artists, artists who have either  influenced or been influenced by the respective artist  and top listeners. When you click a square, the item moves in the center and new related items are displayed.  When you mouse over the center you can get more info, play or buy the item. Very cool!

Channels

If you are busy and don’t have time to track all the music you like, you can subscribe to  channels, that are basically  regularly-updated playlists that Zune Pass members can subscribe to. These are updated by partners–industry heavyweights and Zune employees. I’m going to talk about the Zune Pass a little later.

Picks

Like iTunes Genius, Picks makes music recommendations tailored to your taste, based on your listening habits. your friends and those listeners who prefer the same artists as you. After 116  plays I still didn’t get any recommendations. It is supposed to get better the more music you listen to.

Zune Marketplace and Zune Social

There are some differences between the Zune Marketplace and the iTunes store. The Zune Marketplace offers a lot less music (4 million songs) and no feature length movies or audio books. On the other hand, you have a simple interface and a subscription-based service called Zune Pass, which didn’t turn into a big hit.

For purchasing songs, Microsoft uses a system called Microsoft Points.These are available in denominations of $5 for 400 points. A song is 79 points, which equals to $0.9875, similar to the price on iTunes, but from a psychological point of view 79 is less than 99. To me, the only logical explanation for this confusing system is Microsoft’s greed. Just think at the fact that if you buy 400 points with 5$ you can buy only 5 songs with 395 points, so the remaining 5 points which equals to 0.0625$ remain to Microsoft.

Music content is offered in DRM-restricted WMA format @ 192kbit/s or non-DRM MP3 format (256kbit/s) for a per-song or per-album fee, or via a $14.99 Zune Pass monthly subscription.  The non-DRM offering is larger than Apple’s, but these MP3s are hard to find.

The Zune Pass allows you to download an unlimited number of  tracks, you can play on up to three computers and three Zunes. You are actually renting the music, since Zune Pass downloads cannot be burned to audio CDs and become unplayable when the subscription ends, unless purchased. Luckily you get to keep 10 DRM songs per month and all the MP3s. Also, with the Zune pass you can preview the whole song, not just 30 seconds. Still, 14.99$ seems a little expensive.

When you create a Zune account you get a 14-day free Zune Pass. The Zune pass isn’t a bad deal if you take into consideration that you can strip the DRM relatively easy(FairUse4WM).

Even if you don’t subscribe to the Zune pass you still have access to the music discovery services that will be applied on you existing collection and any music you rip of CDs.

Zune Social is the free online component that displays your  most-played artists, recently played and favorite songs, and a list of your friends. You can also earn badges, if  you listen to an album or artist a certain number of times. This info can be showcased on a user’s Zune card, which is a flash widget that can be embedded on other social sites like MySpace or Facebook.

Conclusion

Zune is a viable alternative to iTunes on the PC side, and you should really give it a try. For me, the Zune Software offered the best music experience on the Windows platform so far.  Too bad it doesn’t support other audio players. If you want to buy an iPod and use it with a Windows PC, I suggest you also try a Zune player first. I know I would, after seeing how elegant the Zune’s interface is.