61–70 of 84 posts
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Zune never took off because Apple unveiled iPhone soon after. When all the news and talks are about this iPod killer from Microsoft and then Apple themselves release a truly groundbreaking iPod killer themselves, you look foolish. Zune really got done in by marketing.
The world was also not ready for music subscriptions. That was the really compelling benefit of Zune for me, that we take for granted today with Spotify et al. The vast majority of people I knew, even early adopter types, just could not wrap their head around the idea. “What happens when you stop paying? You’re left with NOTHING!”
As somewhat of a Zune fanatic, it always makes me happy to see a new Metro-inspired UI, but every one of these Zune-inspired projects falls short when compared to the actual Zune application, which imo is the absolutely pinnacle of music players. It presents your music library in a way that to me is aesthetically pleasing and entirely intuitive. The three column layout, with sorting options for each, is ideal. Filter…
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> If I stop paying the bill I will have nothing to listen to. What have we done? We’ve created one of the most amazing values and uses of technology of our lifetimes? Streaming per month costs so much less than a new CD did 25-30 years ago. And it’s so so so much better than buying a new CD a month. If the average person keeps paying the (quite small) bill, they can listen to essentially anything they want to listen…
This assumes you work on the principle of continuously buying new music. If you're someone with a library of ~2k songs and that doesnt change in any real way for years on end it probably doesn't stack up as well, especially when cd's are so darn cheap these days, being able to pick up ~5 full albums on CD for the price of 1 month streaming with little effort for example. Obvious point about not owning it either, so i…
I’ve never had this happen so far. What makes you think it’s likely to happen?
> If you're someone with a library of ~2k songs and that doesnt change in any real way for years on end it probably doesn't stack up as well
This assumes you work on the principle that you’ve found “enough” music vs. that you lost interest in investing in new music because of the cost of buying it.
As somewhat of a Zune fanatic, it always makes me happy to see a new Metro-inspired UI, but every one of these Zune-inspired projects falls short when compared to the actual Zune application, which imo is the absolutely pinnacle of music players. It presents your music library in a way that to me is aesthetically pleasing and entirely intuitive. The three column layout, with sorting options for each, is ideal. Filter…
IMHO Xbox 360, Zune, Windows 7-10 Mobile and Metro were very good UX implementations at their time, and bizarrely far superior to the touch mode Windows 11 offers today on tablets. WTF Microsoft, why are you regressing on all fronts?! Zune never took off because it came too late and was going against a market already dominated by the iPod, and Metro was hated since Microsoft shoved it down the throats of desktop user…
That doesn’t happen often.
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This assumes you work on the principle of continuously buying new music. If you're someone with a library of ~2k songs and that doesnt change in any real way for years on end it probably doesn't stack up as well, especially when cd's are so darn cheap these days, being able to pick up ~5 full albums on CD for the price of 1 month streaming with little effort for example. Obvious point about not owning it either, so i…
> Obvious point about not owning it either, so if an artist or whole label decides to have a fight with your streaming provider, sorry tough luck, you just lost them from your library. I’ve never had this happen so far. What makes you think it’s likely to happen? > If you're someone with a library of ~2k songs and that doesnt change in any real way for years on end it probably doesn't stack up as well This assumes yo…
The fact that it's already happened, and not once?
Google "recording label removed from spotify" for No.1 examples such as this:
"Spotify has removed Indian record label Zee Music Company’s catalog after negotiations for a renewal of their licensing agreement fell through. As a result, the No.1 track on Spotify in India over the past two weeks, “Apna Bana Le” from the soundtrack to the 2022 Hindi Examplesfilm Bhediya, is no longer available on the platform. "
I realized that I don’t have a single mp3 on my machine these days. If I stop paying the bill I will have nothing to listen to. What have we done?
If you stop paying the bill you still have access to YouTube, Spotify, and others
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IMHO Xbox 360, Zune, Windows 7-10 Mobile and Metro were very good UX implementations at their time, and bizarrely far superior to the touch mode Windows 11 offers today on tablets. WTF Microsoft, why are you regressing on all fronts?! Zune never took off because it came too late and was going against a market already dominated by the iPod, and Metro was hated since Microsoft shoved it down the throats of desktop user…
Zune never took off just like HoloLens, Band, Kinect and Windows Phone didn't take off—not because they were in any way late, but because Microsoft is never "all-in" with any of these ventures. The Xbox was somewhat of an anomaly owing to exclusives like Halo and Gears of War, but it's floundering, and in some countries, like Japan, it's just never taken off, period. Apple Vision doesn't seem to be a sensation in ter…
We weren't making any money off of them and the 100% failure rate of Band 2 doomed the project.
Which sucked, customers loved us and we had features that still aren't matched by anything else on the market even today.
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Definitely. But even if the iPhone were to be delayed there's no way Zune would have made a significant dent in iPod's market. It was already the established player and the user base was already locked in with hundreds of $ in iTunes purchases. The usets weren't gonna throw that away no matter how much better Zune would have been. iPod's market dominance wasn't in some UX magic that couldn't be replicated or braten b…
I was sometimes involved in this project at MS. The music buying experience for Zune was awful, and I regret missed opportunities to be more forceful about telling the Windows Media execs that they were fucking up. Part of the problem was MS insistence on being fair to everyone and having an open system which led to 5000 shitty online stores where you could buy music. Instead of Apple that had exactly one where they…