Music, culture, and the inside scoop from Cesar Menendez,
a Microsoft employee working on Zune - Microsoft's new music project.

February 14, 2007

The Zune Team: Growing

Some of you may have noticed that the Zune team is hiring. It's true; the Zune team is growing. It's like we've been saying all along, dear blog reader: the Zune is a multi-year investment, one that the company is fully behind. Hence, a bigger team. And on the inside, I'm seeing a lot more "welcome so and so to the Zune team" emails come in. Very exciting.

And hey, if you're  a new hire on the Zune team, and are reading this: Welcome!

On a semi-related note, I want to share a pet peeve: when "grow" is used as a transitive verb, for something besides natual things. e.g. - "we're growing the team."  Grrr.

 |  Wednesday, February 14, 2007 11:45 PM  |  10 Comments

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segadc

I am glad the team is growing.  I hope the original members stay too.

SpanishClash

I hope we don't end up "growing" apart ;)

John in S.Florida

Cesar, this is definitely welcomed news!  Hopefully the team build-up and learning curve is a speedie one.

Will this in any way push back the delivery of the next Zune update?

imsmokie

oh btw when is the next update on marketplace? ;)

Kyle

Cool, now hire some programmers and give us a firmware update.

Albert

I agree, a Zune firmware update is kinda due any time soon. I remember last time's firmware update was almost a month after the launch date. We missed January and today is officially the third 14th after the launch date. So besides that, Happy "Zune Launch Date Three Month Anniversary!"...and ofcourse Happy Valentine's! too.

Brad C.

My pet peeve?  When people use incorrect latin abbreviations.

i.e. = id est, literally "that is".  Used to restate the previous phrase.

e.g. = exempli gratia, literally "an example, please".  Used to provide an example of the previous phrase.

admin

fixed! thanks brad!

tom

From the outside looking at this a new set of hires does not look like evidence of the "multi-year commitment." The multi-year commitment is a given from the type of product it is and the competition.

What this looks like on the heels of Bryan Lee getting the boot is that someone up there has identified that the product was/is in trouble.  The valentines day content was the first really interesting thing that has come out zune.net since launch.

Otherwise the product has been stagnent, with a ton of complaints against both the software and firmware that have not been addressed.

I think that with a new VP and a larger team it will make a difference and that the product will now see measurable improvement.

For now though, its just "enjoy what you have" and be as happy as you can with it.  :/  Too bad it wasn't a better launch--I expected more.

swanlee

Glad the team is growing, so which one of these guys is going to enable Lossless audio support on the device? If this is not in the next firmwae update I'm going to be pissed.

The device needs to at least support WMA lossless

I would also like the device to support these file types

.flac

.shn

.wav

I don't care that it takes more space or runs the battery down quicker I want more choices for the types of audio I put on the device and do not want to sacrifice quality.

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About admin

I'm Cesar Menendez. I left the Xbox marketing world for Microsoft's new foray into music - Zune. Community, cool videos, music, discovering new music - these are things I love. In the past I wrote music reviews for RealNetworks, and before that I volunteered at KCMU (now KEXP). Get in touch w/ me using this email: AskZune (then type the at symbol) microsoft.com (please no solicitors)
(edit me)

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