Thanks man!

Congrats!

congrats. Way to go....bring more of it!

Congrats man.  That is great!

Jelous Much

very cool, grats

Congrats Harvey!  

congrats Harv!! dont forget the little people! :P

Hey i was just buying "back to black" CD today at Borders and I saw tonnes of Zune promo posters and leaflets there. keep up the good job team!

Whoah whoah whoah.... On the For Dummies website for the book, it lists as one of the things it will help you do:

"   connecting with friends who share similar taste in music via ZuneLive!,"

I take it this is what Dave Caulton talked about on TWiT? Oh Microsoft... You and your "Live" name. tsk tsk tsk.

P.S. Congrats Harvey

http://www.zunenation.com/article.php/zoon-live-confirmed

...Back in July? (and registered in May). Wow, almost a year ago. Why wait this long? I take it this is the missing bar on Zune.net. Is there a private beta? Public beta?

Drop me a line at Tommy.Stames at gmail. I'd really like to know

Hey, just wondering what the update to the zune software adds. It just popped up for me to update today.

Congratulations Harvey! It does pay to be a Zune fan and I can't think of anyone better for the job.

Way to go Harvey!!

How would Harvey know about ZuneLive (if there is one) ? Does he work for MS?

Congrats Harvey!

On a different note, Cesar would you like to comment on this:

http://www.engadget.com/2007/04/04/microsoft-hints-at-a-free-with-subscription-flash-zune/

The subscription service is definitely a huge advantage over itunes and giving zunes away free ,like is said in the article, would really entice people.

Also, Adam posted an interesting link but what i would like to know is what is happening currently with zune live and why are many microsoft websites registered to a guy called Jack Spurr in Nova Scotia??

Cesar Update:

Hey everyone, Cesar is feeling a bit under the weather so he has not been able to post news today! But tomorrow he will be back ;)

Rhett, thanks for posting your thoughts - to be clear, you think zune is broken b/c it doesn't currently support gapless playback on the device?

and I wouldn't call Zune users dummies. people get their comments erased for posting that kind of thing ;)

congrats harvey!

Giving away Zunes "with subscription" doesn't make sense, since it would take over 2 years of constant user subscription @ $15 to get close to breaking even.  Music services are not "cash cows"... this is why we're seeing continued consolidation in the field.  The real profit is in the device, like iPod.

re: ZuneLive. That reference didn't come from me, it must have come from one of the other authors. My guess is that those words came from *very* early copy for the book, probably from before Zune was even released.

There was some speculation back then about a ZuneLive community similar to XboxLive. I expect that the ZuneLive reference is incorrect, or at the very least very premature, and probably won't be in the published book.

What do you mean it doesn't make sense? Just look at how successful the cell phone market is- many cell phones can be bought free with a monthly subscription. I think the idea of downloading as much music as you possibly could ever want would be very appealing to the average consumer. If you look at the comments to the engadget article many are in favour of the idea. For some people they will never fill their DAP to capacity so what is the point in spending $250 on it when you can't even buy that much music? Thye only reason the other subscription services have been so unsuccessful to date is because they are companies that are little known and they do not have the fnancial power to market it enough. Microsoft ,on the other hand, have plenty of resources to get through to the consumer.

In other news ms have confirmed another colour for the zune: "watermelon red":

http://www.engadget.com/2007/04/05/microsoft-says-watermelon-red-zune-is-in-the-works/

What i don't get is why we learn more from engadget about zune news than the actual zuneINSIDER blog. Take their article about the subscription service- zune's marketing director jason reindrop was their source for that so why didn't cesar mention it if it is being talked about publicly?

WSJ reports "Microsoft Zune May Sell EMI Music Without Copy Protection"

URL: http://online.wsj.com/article_print/BT-CO-20070405-704308.html

WSJ reports "Microsoft Zune May Sell EMI Music Without Copy Protection"

URL: http://online.wsj.com/article_print/BT-CO-20070405-704308.html

Let's not forget that even Amazon has a pink Zune for pre-order; has there even been as much as a mention about a Pink Zune (even to deny it) from the Zune team? Nope! At least not here!

Exactly John, I brought this up a couple of times but there was no response, even when microsoft officially announced it! I'd just like to know cesar's take on it etc.

Adam,

All that was caused by the registration by a certain Jack Spurr. Nobody seems to know quite what his involvement is/was. But, in case you're interested...

http://www.csccorporatedomains.com/downloads/ipscan_issue13_globalsupport.pdf

"In 2001, Register.com started its operations

in Yarmouth with a staff of 40..."

"...says Jack Spurr, the Supervisor of

ccTLD Registrations team in Yarmouth."

Ahh - that would explain it then... :)

Yepp ray, I noticed that you were asking Cesar for answers - and he just ignored you!! I hope he will pick up the pace in the news segment (and no, I don't mean news about parties - as I have no interest in those "stories"). Well, I'm off to Engadget to see if there are any new news about Zune - more change of looking there than here!

Cesar should re negotiate his job. He just just be a dedicated blogger. Who cares about that other stuff he does. no?

Yes John, Cesar did quite coldly ignore me :(

He seems to reply mainly to those posting negative things about zune.

Anyway, as "thenumberdevil" said a few posts above this ms have said they too will sell zune emi music drm free- this link from gizmodo though:

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/portable-media/microsoft-hops-on-the-drm+free-bandwagon-250037.php

The Zune writers should buy Editing for Dummies. I have never seen so many spelling and grammar mistakes on the Zune app. You guys need to fire your editor. All the errors make the app look really unprofessional.

ray, ok, sorry, but I'm breaking the silence on pink. I can confirm we're doing one; I'll have a photo to post on it tomorrow (sorry been way swamped to post)

Cool, thanks cesar. Sorry if I sounded a bit harsh  and I do realise you have a job outside of this blog.

Cesar,

---

to be clear, you think zune is broken b/c it doesn't currently support gapless playback on the device?

---

Yes. Of course I do. I find it odd that someone would not. Was that a trick question?

I love your wording, too. "currently support gapless playback"

It's a music player. One would think it supports the basic ability to play music tracks correctly. Using a technical term and trying to pawn it off as an 'added feature' is offencive. In older players the lack of gapless was concidered a "BUG". A software flaw to be fixed. Just because it was fixed doesn't make it a feature to be supported or not. It was just broken and then fixed.

Zune doesn't properly playback tracks. By definition it is broken. Unless it is designed to NOT play tracks correctly on purpose in which case it is silly.

Also, I don't think my post was delete material but, hey, its your page.

All I know is that I could have purchased a player that played correctly but based on your claim that Zune did play gapless tracks I got a Zune instead. I was a dummy. I really hope this gets fixed in the next few weeks.  

as for the 'free zune w/ subscription thread,' that was taken out of context. Jason was speaking of it as a hypothetical, and it got reported on pretty widely as the official plan of record. the trouble w/ hypotheticals + the web + zune fans, I guess :)

thanks, Rhett, I hear you loud and clear.

Rhett -- The only reason CD players offer gapless playback is because they are designed to just play the content straight through from beginning to end. (Just like cassettes and vinyl records before them.) The only way to have gaps between songs was to manually add them to the CD/cassette/record during the creation process.

In the old days, gaps were *purposely* added between songs to keep songs separate, and give listeners a chance to clear their ears between songs. Some albums went gapless (live recordings, symphonies, the Beatles, Pink Floyd, etc.), but most had gaps manually added between tracks.

So if -- for some technical reason, like complexity -- you had to make a single choice and live with it forever, I think most people would choose gaps over gapless. In my mind, that makes "gapless" a feature. It requires extra development to get it to work properly without messing up the gaps between songs that most people expect.

Remember, the iPod was *hugely* successful before they ever (in your words) "fixed" their gapless playback bug in September '06 -- nearly five years after the iPod was introduced.

@ BJ Nemeth

I understand how Rhett feels because when I'm listening to some albums, the artist *purposely* makes it so gaps don't go through the song. This means that some songs are meant to be played right after each other and not a 2 second gap. When you're listening a song and at the end, it gets ready for the first one and there is a 2 second gap, it kills the playback enjoyment. Some people are audiophiles. If you think about it, most people that bought Zunes were technical and there more of an advanced listener to the average person that just listens with one headphone or the average listener to make it short.

The Zune is an advanced media device and should have advanced features. If it were a flash player, it wouldn't really matter since Audiophiles or people who love music don't use flash players to listen to their music. The quality is worse and less music is played through. Though, this is a 30gig device here and should do everything more advanced than an iPod. I payed for advanced features not just a bricked up iPod nano because the nano actually has more features than the Zune currently.

Though, I still prefer the Zune because of its durability.

note to Cesar: For the love of Pete's sake, don't delete my comment.

BJ,

"In the old days" hehe

We still put space at the end of a recording. That is the current way it is done today in the mastering process for just the reason you stated. So the tracks don't blend together. That is the way it will be done when the kids of today are having kids of their own.

As you said, some recordings don't add the space. The recording is intended to be heard seemlessly.

Your right. the ipods player was broken until last year. They sold a broken product and the consumers complained (incessently) until it was fixed (and those scumbags pawned the fix off as an added feature, too). One of the reasons I held off from buying a portable player was because they didn't work right.

Also, the wheel need not be re-invented here. The ability to playback digital tracks seemlessly is already available. That bug/flaw was fixed in the competitions players long ago. Long before 06 in non-portable players, in fact.

If I had to make a single choice and live with it forever....

I would have chosen to design a device that first and formost played back music recordings correctly(DUH). I would have put the worthless wireless on the back burner until the device was able to play music correctly.

That's the decision I would have lived with.

Look, this is a bug. A flaw in the software design. Not a feature. The more someone tries to spin it into a 'feature' the more irritated I get.

The simple questions are these; Does the device playback my music recordings correctly? No. Am I happy as a consumer about the fact that my new $250 player doesn't playback music recordings correctly? No. Am I starting to shop for a player that will playback correctly? Yes.

Sorry for being so irritaed about this, Guys. The luster has worn off and it's hard to stay positive about somthing that just doesn't work.

:(

Rhett --

Yes, I felt silly writing "in the old days." I'm only 35. :-)

But in my time, I've listened to my music on vinyl records, 8-track tapes, audiocassettes, compact discs, and MP3s.

I understand your passion for this topic, and how frustrating it can be to listen to seamless recordings with gaps added between songs. I only disagree with your claim that it is such an easy fix.

You said the competition had fixed the bug long before Apple did. Could you name specific MP3 players? It was my understanding that the iPod was one of the first portable MP3 players to offer gapless playback. (I could be wrong, and if most players had gapless playback early on, I would concede the entire argument.)

I'll definitely concede that "gapless playback" was always at or near the top of the list of most requested (but reasonable) features for the iPod, so many consumers see it as important. However, it obviously didn't have a significant impact on iPod sales during those first five years.

For you, this is clearly important enough to base your purchase decision, and I respect that. My only disagreement is with your implication that this is an easy fix.

I don't care if it's easy or not. That is irrelevent to me.

heres some nice spin, too.

-----------

I'll definitely concede that "gapless playback" was always at or near the top of the list of most requested (but reasonable) features for the iPod

-----------

Nice use of the word "features". The proper term there is most requested "BUG FUX."

Apple was one of the first to fix it in a portable, sure. I don't think they were -THE- first, though. I also don't see how any of that is really relevent. Are you trying to use the "iPod sold a broken product for a long time so Zune should be able to as well" argument?

Long before Zune was concieved we were aware of this problem. It was fixed in non portables ages ago (WINAMP, REAL, WMP, ect.). I suspect the only reason it wasn't fixed on the early portable devices was due to limited memory on a flash drive. It could have been plain ignorance or lazyness but more likely memory space. We have lots of space these days, though. Especially in a HD player. So what is the technical excuse now? I suspect there isn't one. No excuse at all.

So.. Easy fix? Hard fix? Who cares? They should have built it right the first time then they wouldn't have to fix it now. The technology to do it right was available when they first started discussing this product in a board room.

It's harder than you think, at least for Lossy content.  The MP3 format, as defined by FhG, is not truly gapless.  (Our favorite LAME MP3 encoder, thankfully, added a proprietary header solution.)  Apple's AAC .M4A implementation wasn't gapless, either, initially.  WMA should be, but bugs that have yet to be 100% fixed still cause slight transition ticks in some rip/playback scenarios.

Apple was smart with their recent gapless solution.  They store padding information in the iTunes database at rip, as well as adding proprietary tags to the files, to allow gapless playback.  They also created special logic to scan pre-existing content and determine how to play it back as gapless as possible (using LAME MP3 padding headers, "guessing", etc.)  It works amazing very well.

I hope Microsoft implements a similar solution for Zune, WMP 11, etc. soon.  At the very, very least for WMA content...

Remember that gapless wasn't added to iPod/iTunes until late 2006, well after Zune was initially "designed."

Heck, iTunes itself didn't play gapless at all!  Give them time.

Rhett --

I think the fact that it's (apparently) a difficult fix is *very* relevant.

The proof that it's difficult? If it were easy, everyone would have fixed it early on, because it is so often requested. And for the five years that the iPod was (in your words) "broken," that would have been a competitive advantage other manufacturers wouldn't have passed up.

So it's clearly not an easy fix. Regardless of what was done before in the non-portable market. And if the Zune were held back from release until it included gapless playback, they would have missed the holiday sales season, which would have been suicidal.

Ultimately, we'll have to agree to disagree. You insist on calling this a bug, and take offense when I call it a feature, but that's just semantics.

However, most consumers and industry insiders have called it a feature for years. Trying to get them to change now is like trying to change the word podcast -- it's not going to happen.

Heh...

why don't they just release a source code or something so we can get on hacking the Zune. It needs some homebrew to stay alive :)

Is something being done to address the no custom eq setting?

It isn't just semantics. It actually resinates of a lager problem in the world. It is a sad world where consumers pay high prices for broken products. Where Clever AD people spin bug fixes into future features. Broken into upgradeable. We see it more and more every day. Whatever happened to pride in a quality product? Oh! We outsourced that to china. I forgot. :(

The fact that so many consumers seem to be so synical about it makes me sad. They view it as 'just the way it is'. It is this kind of apathy that allows big corporations to push junk products and services on us. Make no mistake, the Zune has broken playback. The subscription is overpriced and featurless and individual tracks are about 3 times overpriced at 99 cents for a low quality recording. (Industry insiders generally agree that the Lables have passed NONE of the savings of the digitial format onto consumers and that a fair unit price for individual tracks is around 30 cents. Thats another can of worms altogether, though.)

Also, it is factually incorrect to say most consumers and industry insiders have called it (gapless) a feature for years.

Insiders have spun it for sure. They even spun it so much and so hard that some may actually believe thier own BS at this point. Consumers have always viewed it as a bug. Consumers complained loudly. Manufacturers couldn't admit their product was broken so they spun it. It wasn't until it was fixed that the spinsters started refering to the problem as a supported feature. They fixed the broken playback then proudly splattered it all over the place as "Now Supports".

Even the spinsters can't escape useing the term 'fixed', though. To Fix something it must first be broken. Make no mistake, the playback is indeed broken.

And with that, My drink is finished and so am I.

Actually, Rhett, it *is* semantics. We agree on the situation, but we disagree on what to call it (bug or feature). That's the definition of semantics.

I understand your frustration at the spin on calling it a bug rather than a feature. I completely understand your point, and I think you're right. On some level, it was spin. But the spin won out, and most journalists and bloggers talked about it in terms of a "requested feature" rather than a bug fix. There has always been a vocal minority (including yourself) that refuse to call it anything but a bug, and that is your right. But the majority calls it a requested feature. It doesn't make their side right, but it still makes them the majority.

Alternate example -- Some people wanted to change the description of terrorist "suicide bombers" to "homicide bombers," to alter the implied meaning to make it more menacing and less martyr-like. (After all, their primary intent is homicide, not suicide.) But the term "suicide bomber" still predominates. It doesn't make it right, but it still makes it the majority opinion.

Having said that, we effectively agree on everything else, so I'm happy to end the conversation here. We both want to see this fixed on the Zune as soon as possible. And when it happens, you'll call it an overdue bug fix, and I'll call it an overdue feature. But we'll both be happy, right?  :-)

----

But we'll both be happy, right?  :-)

----

Yeah. IF they fix it promptly (too late for that). The longer it takes the more sour the taste and the taste is pretty sour right now. Fixing it a year after conception is no excuse for not doing it right in the first place either. No-one should be happy about that.  

I think what we agree on is that language has been twisted in such a way that the consumer gets the shaft.

The simple, unavoidable, truth is that it's 2007 and one of the most expencive high end new products of today can't playback audio recordings correctly. Thats pretty sad.

Hey! How about that wireless though? Whoo-hoo! (heavy sarcasm)

Hee-hee. I have an suggestion for the spinsters. Call the wireless a -battery life extender- feature. Hee! By turning it OFF you entend the life of your battery. When you say it like that it actually sounds like a worthwhile feature. Ha-Ha! I'm guessing the first thing most Zune users do is enable the -battery life extender- (wireless OFF)

hehe.

I wanted to comment on this too.

----

There has always been a vocal minority (including yourself) that refuse to call it anything but a bug, and that is your right. But the majority calls it a requested feature

----

There are millions of consumers and handfulls of bloggers and insiders. The minority spins the language. One -insider- calls it a feature and it gets repeated on Dozens of review sites read by hundreds of thousands of people before anyone realises what the language is saying.

Millions of consumers who attempt to playback thier music and realise it isnt working correctly will first pick up the manual and try to find out what they are doing wrong. Then they log onto to web seeking info or write emails to support asking for assistance. Then the spin begins. They get a reply from support saying "sorry we don't support that". Or they go to the review blogs and are told the same thing. Now they are brainwashed and just move on with hope the 'feature' will be added asap. The minority even bides time by making statements like "we are currenty looking into this feature" or "We are working on adding this feature in the future"

The minority paints the picture and sells it to the masses who apparenty don't think for themselves. You tell the masses it is a feature and they stupidly just go along. The power of advertising.

It works both ways though. The handful (minority) of bloggers and reviewers could stop repeating the term feature. Something that was planted in thier heads by ONE marketing guy trying to keep his stuff in a good light. They could start using the term bug. A term that accurately describes the issue.

I wonder how quickly it would have been fixed if one review site had done that years ago. Would the Zune still be one of the last music players to fix this problem like they are now?

It's an interesting parallel world to imagine.

I definitely concede the point that the journalistic minority (writers, bloggers, reviewers) overwhelmingly influence the "majority" that I was talking about. But that's the case the world over, regardless of the topic.

Yes, the words we use to describe something are extremely important, and shape our views.

Again, I hope our discussion becomes a non-issue soon.