Screaming Penguin - Source Does Matter

The entire distinguishing factor of the Microsoft Zune - as touted over and over by Microsoft - is supposed to be its ability to "squirt" songs wirelessly to other Zunes.

Microsoft went so far as to create a mock Apple "switch" demonstration for a recent conference in which the Apple user fumbles around with iTunes trying to find content, and the Zune user coolly and casually gets squirted on (hey, it's their terminology, not mine).

When the whole squirting thing was first announced, I thought it was a FANTASTIC idea. I really thought Microsoft had a home run, making an MP3 player wireless capable, brilliant. Then as details emerged my impression changed. The rub came when it turned out that you could only interact wirelessly with other Zunes, and then only to send songs that would last for three days and then squirt away. Frankly that sucks, that pretty much kills it.

Later it was revealed that Microsoft had agreed to pay royalties to Universal and others (without passing anything on to artists) for every Zune sold. Universal probably pushed hard for this, and MS needed them, but bowing was a huge mistake. In affect, this was calling every Zune owner a pirate, and just agreeing to pony up - a horrible precedent.

Then it also turned out that the Zune would not play Microsoft's existing "Plays For Sure" content. There has a been a ton of speculation about why this is, and I have heard many many "experts" and "pundits" basically just fall flat on their face with explaining it. "Why in the world would they do this, Microsoft is screwing all their partners." When In reality, though I have not heard a single expert mention it, it was probably (I havent checked into this) the "partners" that forbade this. What I mean is, Microsoft probably had agreements with the PFS crowd to the effect that they would not COMPETE against them. Meaning when people signed on to PFS they probably required Microsoft to agree not to build their own hardware to compete. At the time MS may not have cared and said "yeah, sure", but now this brilliant strategy (no matter why it exists, my reasoning or not) is screwing BOTH factions (MS and PFS vendors); and customers.

And even though the Zune won't do PFS, rest assured it has a ton of other DRM built in, boy howdy does it. (And though this is a Zune article, I should not that the Apple system and the iPod are no better in this department - I use my iPod just to play either free stuff from iTunes, podcasts, etc, or my own CDs that I rip - so sir, no thank you to FairPlay.)

So without Plays For Sure, with pirate royalties, with its own silly DRM, and with a 3 day squirt limit, the Zune was looking fairly impotent, and was downplayed by most prognosticators.

Now we find out, that EVEN the squirting for 3 days is crippled. Turns out that Sony (ah that name again, absolutely BRILLIANT content providers they are, DRM is really helping them at every turn eh?) and Universal will not allow songs from the Zune library to be squirted (and so Microsoft has to disallow them the squirt party).

I am just astounded at how stupid the entire Zune is. It could have been a great device. And I would be willing to BET they would have sold more of them, if they just said piss off to the labels, had NOTHING in the "library" and just made it an open MP3 player with wireless capability (bill it as, rip and play what you already own, etc). But of course MS could not do that (all the agreements all over the place with DRM and content providers, for Windows, etc). Granted much of the blame for the debacle lies with the content providers, who insist on the DRM, but Microsoft should stop towing the line.

Hopefully something good will come of the Zune, maybe it will serve as a wakeup call to the brain dead RIAA, MPAA types, get rid of DRM, sell the content cheap, and you will have a lot more "customers" and a lot fewer "pirates", get a clue already - people have been saying this for 3-4 years now. (I mean a song for 25 cents cheap, NO DRM, sell 10x more than now, make more money, have less pirates.) Or better yet, maybe it will finally convince people that smaller independent content providers, sans DRM, are definitely the way to go.