Zune Is My Music Player of Choice, Here’s Why

by stephen on Feb.09, 2010, under microsoft, news

Even against the #1 choice, the Apple iPod, I’ve found an MP3 player and software that is even better. No seriously, I have.

I love music. Who doesn’t? I love music so much I have stacks and stacks of CD’s, live DVD’s, original albums, and a handful of cassettes. Wait, no I don’t, it’s 2009 and music is digital. Music is now more easily accessible, readily available, and at a higher fidelity.

As I write this, I’m cranking my favorite tracks all from the internet on my PC. The digital music era has been dominated by one player, the Apple iPod. But I’m going to tell you why you should choose another player, the Microsoft Zune.

Microsoft has created some really great hardware here. The newest, the Zune HD (pictured above), is an amazing (and small) device. It has an OLED multi-touch screen, wireless, HD radio, great battery life, and a beautiful user interface. The Zune HD starts at $220 for the black 16GB model and $299 for the 32GB model.

The Zune software (for your PC) is just as amazing as the Zune HD. They have made it so easy to find new music, related artists, even tour dates. The interface looks great and has high quality images of your favorite artists.

Here is the absolute greatest feature of the Zune system, the Zune Pass. For $14.99/month, you have UNLIMITED access to a huge catalog of music. For the price you would pay for one CD, you can download or stream anything from the Zune catalog. Think of it just like your cell phone bill, albeit a whole lot cheaper.

iTunes, the software from Apple for the iPod, only offers music for $0.99 a song and about $10-15 per album. That can get expensive for music addicts like me.

The Social, is Zune’s ‘Facebook’ side of the service. Difference being, it’s all about the music. See what your friends have been listening too or send them your favorite new track. It’s all about finding great new music.

Zune, like iTunes, also includes music videos, podcasts, movies and tv shows. Much of this content is also high-definition.

The experience is only going to get better. Microsoft plans to extend the experience from device and PC, to Xbox 360, Windows Phones and Media Center. Microsoft will see through Bill Gates’ vision for a digital lifestyle where devices, services and applications work together seamlessly. In the future, if you’ve paid for an album once, you’ll have access to it anywhere, device, PC, phone and so on.

The Zune software is free, so go to http://www.zune.net and download it now. It is great software and should be your new music collection player.

If you have any holiday cash left and you’re looking for a new music player, give the Zune a “touch” drive. You won’t be disappointed.

See you in the Social.