Observers have noticed a few problematic items in Microsoft’s Zune portable media player, which it unveiled last week. Firstly it is ever so slightly larger than the comparable 30GB iPod and the announced battery life is less. Even the slightest extra weight or size will no doubt be remarked upon in any review.
Secondly the Zune will not play DRM protected music sold through Microsoft’s own Windows Media "PlaysForSure" system used by online stores such as Napster, Rhapsody, MTV's Urge and Yahoo Music Unlimited. Microsoft defends by stating that the Zune is designed to be tightly integrated with the Zune Store just as iPods are designed for iTunes and it hopes to continue to work with its PlaysForSure partners RealNetworks runs the Rhapsody music service may develop its own end to end solution in response.
Finally many feel that the Zune’s highly touted wireless music sharing system is not only too limited but may violate the Creative Commons (CC) license by wrapping all shared music including freely available CC-licensed works with DRM protection that limited the recipient to playing the music three times over the next three days (via BoingBoing). This shotgun approach is likely due to the difficulty of determining if a song tagged as CC-licensed is really free or a commercially limited song that the Zune's owner retagged in software.
I think Microsoft should take the following approach to sharing music between Zune devices.
- If the track is from the Zune store and the recipient subscribes to the rental service than they should be able to listen to it as much as they want just like any other Zune store track.
- If the track was purchased from the Zune store and the recipient does not subscribe to the rental service the three plays limit should apply.
- Tracks from other than the Zune store should either be freely sharable or not at all.
Update: September 20, 2006
Ars Technica has more details on the Zune music sharing system. Unprotected files will not be modified; rather the receiving unit will implement the 3 plays in 3 days rule. Also tracks received by sharing cannot be shared in turn. Finally the article notes that Microsoft still vague about what can be shared, maybe unprotected files cannot be shared at all.