Can’t Buy Me Love – Why Getting Digg Hosts to Pimp the Zune Fell Flat

The Microsoft Zune is definitely the underdog when it comes to MP3 music players. In this market, there is only one king and everyone knows it’s the iPod. It’s hard for anyone offering an alternative MP3 player to get ahead, even when they have the marketing budget of a company like Microsoft. 

And the Zune – it’s not all bad, you know? The team knew they had to do something a little different to set it apart when they built it, so the Zune offers some unique features like wireless sync and wi-fi sharing of music, pictures, videos, etc. There’s also an all-you-can-eat subscription service (the Zune Pass) available and the Zune marketplace contains over a million DRM-free tracks (and not at jacked-up rates, either).

The features alone weren’t enough to convert the legions of Apple fans, but at least the Zune was making waves. Zune was establishing itself as an alternative…and that’s a good place to start.

Then came the quirky television commercials. Some people loved them, some just thought they were odd. Whichever side you took, you have to at least admit they were memorable. They were different. They were artistic and they didn’t look anything like the iPod commercials. (I personally thought they were cool…and I hate most commercials.)

Zune TV Ad

But where the Zune marketing efforts veered off course was in sponsoring Diggnation. Although Alex claims to really like the Zune, listening to Kevin Rose discuss the device, like in this recent paid advertisement (see below) reeks of disingenuity. Everyone knows Kevin is a hardcore Apple fan and the only reason he’s sitting on the couch is to make some money.

Alex & Kevin Talk Zune 

It’s like the Zune marketing team wanted to buy their way to the top by purchasing a bit of Alex & Kevin’s geek cred, but that’s just not how it works anymore. Yes, there was a time when a famous spokesperson could sell a product, but today’s youngest generation of consumers, Gen Y, is wary of being marketed to and not quite that gullible.

They want to know what the people they admire, be them famous singers, actors, or even internet stars really believe in. They don’t want an infomercial.  This generation can tell the difference between a pitch and a conversation and they can smell a marketing stunt from a mile away. And Kevin Rose talking Zune? That one is so obvious it’s just sad.

And what kills me is that it was unnecessary, too. Zune was building a brand for themselves as something unique. Something different. From its very launch when one of the color choices was a controversial chocolate brown, Zune was standing up and saying – “hey, look at us, we’re not an iPod. We’re different!” 

That “uniqueness” is the brand - the TV commercials mirrored this sentiment as did the other marketing efforts like the site Zune Originals, which lets you customize your Zune by having it engraved with select artwork. And it’s not cheesy stuff either – there’s a huge selection to choose from and it’s all that same weird, quirky stuff from real, honest-to-goodness artists.

Plus, there’s the occasional extra-hip Zune available there, like the current Joy Division Zune which is, in fact, so hip that it doesn’t even have mass market appeal.

And let’s not forget the latest addition, Zune Arts, which I recently blogged about here. The site features content (desktops, wallpapers, buddy icons, etc.) from several visual artists, all of which is downloadable for the Zune.

Their latest offering is what even may be a first – a graphic novel made just for the small screen. Does anyone else even offer that? Is that the start of a whole new form of media? Who knows, but it’s definitely interesting…and it works.

So, the Zune marketing team should stick with appealing to the indie crowd and whatever notoriety they achieve there will trickle down to the masses over time. (It’s why bands like “Death Cab for Cutie” are now getting airplay.) Going the indie route takes time, but it can worth the effort in the long run.

What doesn’t work, though, is buying 8 minutes of time to have the one guy who can’t stand any Microsoft product sit on a sofa and pretend to be interested. And seeing that the video has only achieved 1000+ views, the entire audience seems to agree.

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From Grooveshark there now comes a handy new tool called TinySong that lets you share music with your friends. To use TinySong, you enter in an artist’s name or the name of the song and do a search. From the Grooveshark database, a list of results will appear. When you see the one you want, click the link and the site will convert the link to the song into a TinySong-flavored TinyURL, which is then conveniently copied to your clipboard so you can share it with friends via IM, email, or Twitter.

Wiiizzz offers a way to discover what people on Twitter have been listening to and sharing on Twitter by aggregating tracks and posting them in a random order on the Wiiizzz homepage. Right now though, only the band names display. You can click the play button next to the band name to listen to the song, but you can NOT download it and they have no plans to ever allow that. In the future, they will be updating the UI, currently black and white, and maybe even add the names of the songs. That would be nice. It would also be great if the songs were ranked by popularity.

According to TorrentFreak, Nine Inch Nails (the only band that seems to get music 2.0) is offering a new single "Echoplex" for free on Facebook. I added myself as a fan of them on Facebook, but somehow missed the single - was there a trick to that? However, the single is also available for download on their iLike page. Included with the download was a cryptic message to fans informing them to head to the band’s official website on May 5th (today) for another secret surprise. I originally thought that the surprise is a free download of "Disciple," another brand-new single, but apparently, that was old news.  As it turns out, the band is giving away a new album, Slip, for free. You know, having to hunt for the free music almost makes it more fun to acquire.

(this post was updated from its original format)

Tell me we’re not heading down a dangerous road: an article in today’s Guardian reports on how ISPs worldwide have turned into the police of the web, throttling, shifting, and killing packets left and right. In the U.S., Comcast has been in the news for their throttling of heavy BitTorrent users, but they are by no means the only ISP participating in this type of activity, and, if anything, the U.S. has the least problems in this area.

In Japan, for example, the four largest ISPs recently announced they would terminate the accounts of anyone that the "entertainment industry" claims is a repeat copyright offender. How do they know this info? The ISPs hand it over: IP address and all.

In Canada, the national telco, Bell Canda, is dropping BitTorrent packets left and right - and not just those from their customers, either. They’re dropping the packets generated by other ISPs, too.

In the UK, regulators are considering a "3 strikes, you’re out" rule for copyright infringers.

And the EU is pushing through legislation whose penalties would include permanent bans on doing business, seizure of assets, criminal records, and fines of up to €100,000.

Now, somebody tell me since when was it the responsibility of ISPs to enforce the legality of the bits that pass through their pipes? Should they then, oh, say filter out illegal content of other sorts, too? Oh, no that would be censorship. Like China. That would be bad.

And why does the entertainment industry, in whatever country in the world, get to push their nose down into our tubes because they failed to come up with a sustainable business model for the digital age? It was not the fact that torrenting is easy (go ask your mom to try it) that has led to widespread pirating of music, movies, games, and other items, it was the lack of decent alternatives to finding this content in the digital form people wanted. The market auto-corrected.

Even now, pirating continues since every song isn’t available as a DRM-free file that can go from iPod to Zune to Rio to cell phone to PC to stereo and back again. But a torrent search reveals a ripped mp3 that does.

And all those people torrenting the latest Hollywood blockbuster? Trust me, when the movie is that good, they’ll be in theaters. Not everyone who torrented say, "Enchanted," would have paid full price to view it, you know. They were probably just insanely bored on a Saturday. If it wasn’t there to torrent, they would have found something else to do that day. They would have simply never watched the movie. And they would have never gone out to buy the DVD for their niece’s birthday later that year because they remembered that it wasn’t that bad after all.

Besides, why should we believe the MPAA about the pains of piracy when they intentionally lied to us? Back in ‘05 they claimed 44% of their "losses" were due to college pirating activities, which they later recanted, saying it was only 15%. Then they go and report record box office revenue. Oh, cry me a river.

And there is the issue of pirating vs. torrenting. Pirating may mean using BitTorrent, but it could also mean old-fashioned ways of making unauthorized copies. Burning a bunch of CDs, for example. But torrenting does NOT equal pirating. Linux distros are put out as torrents. Pando and NBC are teaming up to release TV shows via torrents on NBC Direct. Miro uses torrents.

So, I’d never thought I would say this, but thank god for Verizon. They’re actually introducing a new P2P protocol, P4P, to reduce backbone traffic and lower network operation costs just so they can continue operating without having to throttle traffic.

(Oh and, Verizon? Thanks for the the FIOS, it’s pretty sweet.)

Oh, I needed this! I’ve got MP3s and MP4s and WMAs and god knows what else filling up gigs of storage at my house, thanks to a little sneakernet-ing not to mention ripping nearly my entire CD collection to my PC. And even though both Windows Media Player, iTunes, and my copy of Media Monkey all check online databases to find the metadata for the tunes, none of them are 100% perfect and mistakes happen. Plus, for some reason, there are those songs that they just can’t identify. And when you’ve filled up an 80 GB hard drive with MP3s and are still growing, the more automation, the better.

So when I discovered TagScanner, a free download that can help me organize my music, I was thrilled. The program can import tag info from freedb.org, Amazon, or TrackType.org, plus you can have it auto-generate tags from files and folders or rename your files based on tag info. The program supports tons of file types too, including:

MP3, OGG, Musepack, Monkey Audio, FLAC, AAC, OptimFROG, SPEEX, WavePack, TrueAudio, WMA, MP4 audio files

as well as

ID3 1.0/1.1/1.2/2/2.3/2.4, APE v1 and v2, WMA, MP4, and Vortbis tags, comments, and metadata.

Now I haven’t tested this out yet (this looks like a weekend project for me), but I’m hoping this will be the app that finally gets my library in shape.

The Guardian, which always offers an interesting perspective on UK web trends, posted an article today that caught my eye: "Home copying - burnt into teenage psyche." According to a new study by the industry group British Music Rights, 95% of 18-24 year-olds have engaged in "home copying," which includes things like copying files from one hard drive to another, making copies of CDs, and even the old-fashioned kind of copying - taping songs off the radio.

Although the record industry has focused on combating file sharing, as it turns out, "offline copying" is actually more prevalent. In fact, the study showed that two-thirds of this young crowd copied 5 CDs a month for friends. That’s a lot of free music. When kids share their files in this "offline" way in addition to online via file sharing networks, the result is large collections of unpaid-for music. The findings state that half the music in an average MP3 collection haven’t been paid for.

But I wonder: do these large collections of shared music really represent lost revenue for the record labels? Sharing music has been easy to do, ever since the invention of double-decked boom boxes - insert blank tape, hit play, hit record. With CDs, it was rip and burn. And with MP3s, it’s copy-and-paste. I find it hard to believe that the "new" medium of these digital files has prompted any more "offline" file sharing than that which occurred in the days where I was dubbing the latest Madonna tape for my poorer friends.

Kids are always sharing music, especially teens. They’re at an age where they’re discovering who they are, figuring out their identities, trying different personas on for size…and something about music helps them through this process in ways in ways other things can’t. So kids sharing music with friends? Nothing new here.

Granted, online file sharing brings in another component - sharing music with their friends, and, oh say thousands of others, but even then, it’s not necessarily causing lost sales. The kids wouldn’t have had the cash for their entire music collections anyway, so stifling sharing wouldn’t mean more revenue for the labels, it would mean less exposure for new artists and smaller, less diverse collections for music buyers. Sharing music means we get to sample more and have our eyes opened to bands and singers we would have never taken notice of before. I’d argue that sharing music is GOOD for the industry.

What this industry needs to grasp, both overseas in the UK, here in the US, and worldwide, is that the game is changing. Forerunners like NIN’s Trent Reznor have the right idea, giving away some tracks for free to the casual users, but providing something of value to the core fans via "deluxe" packages. I mean, the dude made $1.6 million in 9 days, you know?

Oh, that’s right. He doesn’t have a label anymore. No wonder the industry is scared. Well, they had better find their value and find it fast, otherwise, they’re done for.

Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails promised that he would launch his next album, Ghosts I-IV, without a label. It appears he has been true to his word. The new album, which features 36 songs in total, can be purchased online in a variety of ways. Unlike Radiohead’s "In Rainbows" album, this new NIN album isn’t actually 100% free, but fans can get 1/3 of the songs for free, which pretty much equals a normal album’s worth of music. Let’s go crash the servers! Download here.

A man who goes by the name of "DVD Jon," gained fame for cracking both the DVD code and Apple’s FairPlay. Now he’s offering a new software application, called DoubleTwist, that allows for sharing of any music, photo, or video file on any portable media player as well across social networks. The CEO of DoubleTwist, Monique Farantzos, recruited Jon (Jon Lech Johansen) to build the software, which he and 10 others have worked on for 8 months.

How easy is the software? Says Jon, "the goal is to make something your parents can use." To use the software, a device is plugged into a Windows XP or Vista PC (Mac will be later) and DoubleTwist will recognize it and all the media files on the device. Using the software, the file can then be selected, dragged, and dropped into DoubleTwist to be synched up to a separate device, or shared with your friends on DoubleTwist.

The app will also work with Facebook and soon all OpenSocial platforms, allowing users to share media across social networks. Using the Facebook app TwistMe, Facebook users can drag and drop media into a box on another user’s Facebook profile. The friend will then see the shared files show up in their DoubleTwist client. They also automatically add audio and video files you receive from friends to your iTunes library. Shared photos will also be added if you enable iTunes photo sync.

DoubleTwist currently recognizes the following file types:

• Video: 3gp (used by most cell phones), MPEG4 (.mp4, .m4v), wmv, avi and MPEG2 (.mpg, .mpv, .mpeg)
• Audio: mp3, aac/m4a, wma, wav
• Pictures: jpg, gif, png, bmp

DoubleTwist currently supports the following devices:

• Nokia N Series phones
• Sony Ericsson Walkman & Cybershot phones
• LG Viewty phones
• Windows Mobile 5.0/6.0 phones (e.g. Treo, HTC, Palm)
• Sony PSP
• Amazon Kindle

DoubleTwist will also recognize your iTunes playlists and will detected which ones are DRM’d. To decode them, the software plays the song in the background (without volume) while re-recording the files as MP3s. (This sounds like a good way to convert your iTunes files to MP3s, too, doesn’t it?)

You can download DoubleTwist for free, spyware-free from here.

(found on Cnet)

Gimado is yet another music search engine, somewhat like SeeqPod. The Gimado engine crawls the web in search of MP3 files and when you do a query, it will return results for songs that you can either play or download. Like many other music web search sites, a result doesn’t necessary mean the content is available. The songs Gimado finds can be rated with starts on a scale of 1 to 5, however, nothing is currently being done with these ratings although Gimado says there are many things “in the works.” Gimado also wants to compensate artists, like Songza is currently trying - that is, they are using an ad-supported model to generate revenue, which would be split 50-50 with artists. Sounds like another lawsuit from the labels is on the horizon!