I want to start this blog on a positive note. If not for the Zune team, Microsoft would probably have little chance regaining a footing in the mobile phone market. The Zune team is awesome, they are very talented, and they have done some amazing things to transform a strategically important part of Microsoft.
I removed my rose colored glasses to write the rest of this blog though, it wasn't easy, because I was was once, and still am an evangelist of the Zune.
Imagine if you were renting a house, payments up to date, and one day you went to work and when you returned you found the locks were changed.
I want to start by saying that I like the idea of subscription music when it's executed well. I do not believe or support piracy. ..but I don't like when music licenses disappear from my library.
This is a serious blog about subscription music.
Have you ever been in a situation where you get so used to doing something that you don't pay attention to what's going on around you? A situation where once you realize what happened you wonder why you didn’t figure it out earlier?
I admit it. Since the beginning I was a very vocal subscription music evangelist. I’ve written many blogs on why subscription music and Zune makes sense. I love the business model, I love all you can eat subscription music, and the new Zune HD is pretty sweet. ..but I've been blinded by my own enthusiasm, and I finally had a wake up call a couple of weeks ago.
It started when two of my Zune’s died (one I dropped in water, the other is just old), and I was going to replace them immediately. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it) I didn’t have time to pick up replacements and I ended up back in Calgary.
So now I’m in Calgary, I blew the dust off of an old Zune 30 Gig and reformatted it. I then started going through my music collection and was dragging and dropping a few selections over.
In the past I ignored the music that wouldn't copy over for whatever reason (those of you who own Zune's know exactly what I'm talking about), but this time I wanted to find out what was going on. My media storage was nearly full and I was ready to go out and buy a few more hard drives... but then it struck me.
Why do I need this much storage? What's going on?
Why does some music work and some doesn’t? Why does music that I downloaded and listened to many times in the past not work anymore? Why is it that sometimes the music that I rented is no longer working and no longer available in the catalog? ..and more importantly, why do I have to be an expert to dig through and find these errors?
You think my wife would ever figure any of this out?
So then I started digging into the file history and I was shocked to see duplicate directories, files stored in a “subscription” directory and the same non-working music stored in the Zune directory. Then on top of that I went through some of these directories and noticed multiple duplicates of the same song. Why is that? Because every time a license changes and you go to listen to it and it doesn’t work you do the natural thing and try to re-download it.
10 Free Song Credits
To make matters worse, Zune offers something called “song credits” where you get 10 free songs every month (so if you cancel your subscription you can still listen to them). I’ve been downloading “The Complete Led Zeppelin” 10 songs at a time for months. I just found out that half of my collection is stuck with DRM and the other half is are MP3’s. It's my fault for not clicking on the "available in MP3" on the left, but it's not something the average person would see. How frustrating is that? It’s so annoying I can’t even begin to explain it.
DRM, the good and the bad
What the Zune DRM doesn’t do well is manage their licenses, audio, files, or behind the scenes user experience well.
What Zune does do well is offer a great experience of music exploration in a nicely designed software environment. The pricing is very reasonable, the 10 song bonus is a bonus if you use it right.
The good is currently outweighed by the bad, however. The graveyard of dead files and junk that I found throughout my media storage system is shocking. I am beyond disappointed. If I wasn't an expert I couldn't imagine how I would deal with this.
Fixing the damage
So what is the solution? If you are in the same boat as I am you are probably wondering where to start. Well, I would recommend is downloading only DRM free music (make sure you click on the MP3s). Use the Zune Pass to listen to and stream music, and download "temporary" music. Clean out your subscription folder often!
DRM sucks if your music doesn't play.
Now perhaps it's not only Microsoft that has this problem, it's likely more a DRM issue than anything....but If you choose to support DRM you should focus on your customers first.
I welcome any comments or questions on this blog.
