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

May 06, 2008

Zune Spring Update

I’m excited to announce the Zune Spring Update: Zune 2.5. We’re adding new features and enhancements to your Zune, the Zune software, Zune Social and TV shows in Zune Marketplace.

For details on the update, head to the press release, but at a high level, in the Spring update:

  • Zune cards becomes more portable.  You can already put it on social networking or other websites – now you can drag and drop your friend’s cards onto your player.  If you have a Zune Pass that means you get full track versions of everything they’ve been listening to on your Zune
  • We’re opening a video store in Zune Marketplace, with 800 episodes, from partners like NBC, MTV, Comedy Central, Turner and more.
  • Adds a number of customer-requested features and improvements to the PC software and Zune Social – like autoplaylists, browse your collection by genre and gapless playback on your Zune

The update should go live early tomorrow morning.

On a personal note, I would say that this update is in large part thanks to direct interaction and feedback from users, whether from the forums, the comments on this site, formal research and more.  We listened, and we hope you like it!

 |  Tuesday, May 06, 2008 12:15 AM  |  61 Comments

Comments

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jose

Thanks for the updates!! A viedo store is very exiting and very nice job in putting in autoplaylists and gapless playback. Continue the grat work you guys do!

mazola

You're welcome.

Adam Kirkland

Sounds awesome to me...

But my Zune Card doesn't work anymore cause I'm Canadian :'(

ZuneTracks

Kudos to the Zune team for listening! You guys rock!!!!11!!ONE

Chris Hammond

Thanks Cesar and the entire Zune team! I'm looking forward to seeing all the new enhancements!

DETHZUNE

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!

Chris Hammond

Quick question, will the TV shows be available via Zune Pass? I assume not, but would prompt me to subscribe if they were.

Jander

Many thanks for getting the features we've been very vocal about for the past 5 months. And big ups for moving into making the "Social" into an actual social. The Pass + friend feeds = awesome. Compelling stuff Cesar.

Bob

Jesus Christ About time This Update Better Rule!

Tom

Oh, wow.

The Zune Pass was cool before.  This *is* the killer app for subscription music, if it works right, and it looks like it just might...

ShawnT

This is awesome I hope this update is just the shadow of things to come. Zune has really started to pull from the shadow of the Ipod and I think if anything will do that it will be listening to what people want

Albert

Wow! This is amazing. Kudos! Kudos! And yes, thanks for listening.

Master Devwi

Wow, this looks amazing!  Thanks for all the hard work you and the Zune team do!  My only question is: will the screensaver finally be disabled during playback?  Thanks again!

Mark

huzzah!

Drea | Pinksage

I can't wait for tomorrow and checkout all the new goodies on the social and on the marketplace! yayz!

Toph

You rock. :D I wasn't expecting this sort of thing until the fall!!!

It feels greedy to be even thinking about the next step, and you've probably heard this before, but hey, you say feedback's helpful, right? So--

1. Audible?

2. More video content is always welcome :)

3. Is content portable Xbox <--> Zune??? (That'd be huge...)

Anyway, congrats.

Toph

Ooh, and Zune.net is down... hmmm...

Greg Mency

can some1 tell me what exactly is an auto playlist. email me at galletas216@yahoo.com or on aim...gonnaballuup21

brutha-man

Haha and iFans were convinced Zune would crash and burn. Keep up this pace Zune! But Zune really needs to start expanding worldwide... I would expect by the year's end?

Jacinto1234

Thank you!! seriously!

Punataro

Wanna scream out so loud for the new update

WooHoooo

Thanks to Zune Team

Lance

Still no support for East Asian Characters?

I am really disappointed.

When can we get it??? Please?

Many songs in my music collection just can't display properly on Zune because of this.

Jim

EXCELLENT! cheers zune!

wangxiaohu

We want CJK fonts in Zune!!!

Ignorant Techie

Now, can we just get normal pricing instead of this ridiculous Microsoft Points BS sold in $5 increments (sp)?  I don't want to spend $5 for a song.  Until this is "fixed", I'll continue to make my purchases from Amazon.

For all else, thanks for the update.

Philippe Majerus

And yet another update that list my artists and tracks as □□□□□, □□□ □□, □□ □□ and □□□□...

If you listened to your customers, I just guess people listening to international music haven't been vocal enough ?!

When will the Zune finally be able to show asian caracters like every other player on the market ?

"Welcome to the social" should start by respecting cultural diversity.

Jeff

Hi, I removed DrWatson for my computer. It is required at the install. Could you tell me how to install it without it, I remember there were such a method for older version.

Thanks a lot and keep up the good work.

Jaxim

thanks guys! I'll report back what I think of the update but from what I've read so far, it sounds good.

Next time, though, don't wait so long to issue out small updates. Give us a bone more often with one or two substantial feature updates before your huge Fall update.

bob e

Fantastic~  It should be an exciting day... I see the marketplace is currently cown

williamc

Autoplaylists!  Thank you very much!

Espiox

Holy crap. I think almost everything I wanted is in there*! It's like Xmas in Spring. Thanks for such a colossal update team!

* Except the clock :P

EZRyder

Zune update is excellent...metadata editing / gapless / video metadata...just get the thing for sale in the UK so I can be social and I'll be a very happy bunny

FLAC would be nice in the Autumn / Fall :o)

paulypies

All my podcasts on the Zune now are in a messed up order and all my musics album art has been messed up! :( not impressed. tho the other changes seem pretty good. I definitely appreciate the gapless playback and faster opening of podcasts opening on the software

game masta j

oh no its happening!!!

Zune is becoming a product and not project.

I would personaly like to give a BIG thanks and a job well done to the zune team. You guys and girls have really listened to the community and you really take the phrase "you make it you" to heart thanks from a loyal zuner!!!!!!!!

Espiox

Should I be able to log in via the Zune Software? Because I can't... I hope this isn't the bug that plagued me just after I got a Zune Pass...

Otherwise, sweet update!

Phil W (canada)

Seeing as how the 360 supports DIVX why not support it on the ZUNE. Arnt you guSY in the same division?!?!

AlexNC

Great job Zune team! Always good to see you are listening to our requests. I especially like the enhanced tag editor and gapless playback. Kudos.

But, please, PLEASE, get some Xbox 360/Zune interaction going soon. I can't believe it still is not there. Why can I not move my Xbox 360 TV shows over to my Zune. This is not acceptable =(

John Miller

Metadata and autoplaylists! THANK YOU!!!

Just one teeny tiny favor though... can we bring back song flagging on the device? That feature was invaluable for dummy-playlisting.

But wow, thanks!

EZRyder

Just noticed that marketplace is missing from my Zune software....I presume that this is because I'm in the UK and don't have a Zune profile....bit of a bummer - even though it was ltd in v2.0 it was quite useful

paapDOTnet

Thank you Zune Product Team!

When the Zune2 software came out I listed 7 problems that you needed to address.  This nails a couple of them.  Here's my list:

1.  Auto Playlists.  (THANK YOU)

2.  Meta Tag Editing.  (THANK YOU - better than iTunes even)

3.  Audiobook Support.  (Anything you can comment on this report: http://community.winsupersite.com/blogs/paul/archive/2008/04/18/unconfirmed-xp-lives-on-zune-and-audible-compatibility.aspx ???)

4.  Lyrics/Podcast Notes Support.

5.  Bring Back 5 Star Song Rating. (that would also include some auto playlist enhancements)

6.  Flag Songs to Inbox.  (I miss that feature, it was a great way to bookmark your memory about something when listening to music!)

7.  Better Playlist Support.  (M3U format interoperability - automatically - would be nice)

I use Media Center extender with my XBox 360 and I really like how that all fits together.  I stream music and have family pics scroll through.  It would really be nice if I could keep that whole integrated UI and not have to maintain separate playlists for the Zune and the XBox.

I'm sure there's more but again THANK YOU.  Now the party's over and it's time to get back to work.  So when is the rest of that list coming?  ;)

Jon Galloway

Glad to see a new release. Biggest missing features for me:

-No way for plugins like Last.FM to work. You'd have more people using the Zune Social if you didn't make them pick. If I could listen to my music in the Zune software and still keep my Last.FM profile updated, I would. Instead, I use WinAmp.

-No way to sort on filesize. When my Zune is full, there's no easy way to see what's taking the most space.

-No way to control playback speed. That's important for podcasts.

-Podcasts with more than one enclosure aren't supported. Most music podcasts include several songs in a post.

Phil W (canada)

"Beginning Tuesday, Canadians will be able to download Zune music management software similar to Apple's iTunes from zune.ca. However, Canadians will not have access to the Zune Marketplace, Microsoft's online music and video store."

Now thats useless. Ive had the software workign with my zune sinse the launch of the Zune80, now that its officialy avilable here, whats new?.....nothing....I want a ZUNE PASSS

lunaclown

YES!!!! Auto playlists!  Thank you!  

What about the splitting of albums when downloaded?  I can't seem to resolve this issue.

Videos!  Finally....

Diego

Zune is is the best!

Darren

OK? So if I already bought tv shows on my 360, I have to buy them again on zune. Thats retarded, its even with the same .net account. Thanks microsoft! not.

Matt

Funny, after I'd stopped coming here cause there wasn't much news lately, there's the first major update to v2. Only found out about it via Major Nelson's Twitter.

But need I say how great this is? Now Zune just needs a few things for it to be fully awesome. I'd say a clock... Last.FM integration in Zune, and more TV shows (Of course, but I'm sure that's on the way now).

But you guys have really nailed it. Kudos.

Matt

Awesome job guys! And here I was beginning to think Microsoft was giving up on the Zune since I haven't heard anything lately.

Now, if only Monk episodes from NBC Universal shows up on the marketplace.

And also, like everyone else, try to get a way so the DRMs would say "we have already downloaded these files [on the 360]" to really give a push to the 360-Zune-Windows connectivity.

mcepat

instead of having a xbox live marketplace and a zune tv marketplace, why don't you combine it and make all downloads for xbox and zune? (like itunes)

The whole thing of building and supporting 2 seperate marketplaces is kind of dumb

Scott

Terrific update Zune.

I am so impressed!

Microsoft Point Hater

Updates that give are almost always good.  

Sandy

The spring update seems aweosome! Many useful features! However, one thing I'd like to see in the Zune is video playlists which are not yet supported. Also, creating audio/video playlists from the device would be nice!

asurroca

Great update! Most of the features still left that we've been asking for are finally here. I'm already loving how easy it is to search for album art/info, much smoother than in WMP11.

I'm still dying for a Last.FM plug-in. Hell, put out a Zune API for developers and let the floodgates open.

Definitely merge Zune and Xbox Marketplaces so that you can mix and match how and where you make your purchases. Read: If I buy, say, The Office episodes, I want to be able to download them on my Zune AND on my Xbox wihtout a hitch.

Luigi

Does anyone know why the Zune still cannot recognize the DiscNumber tag? Also, what version(s) of ID3 is now supported?

grommet

Luigi, it does read and let you set the disc number tags.  There are some sorting display bugs in the UI, though.

The de facto industry standard for MP3 tagging is ID3v2.3, and the Zune software continues to read/write this.  It can also read old ID3v1 for backwards compatibility.  The same is true for Explorer shell, and all Microsoft media products.  The less common ID3v2.4 is not supported.  See my comments about why ID3v2.4 didn't do very well here:

http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=28380

apathymusic

Thank you for the gapless playback!!!  I've been waiting for this feature for a long time!  And it works great.

Luigi

grommet, yes, I see that the tag editor is writing id3 v1 and id3 v2.3 to the files. One thing that I'm trying to figure out is how we should be editing disc numbers. If you leave the disc number field empty it defaults to disc 0. When you then look at the file in mp3tag the discnumber tag reads 0/1. Not a problem now, but I'm wondering if I then load my files onto an iPod or something will it have trouble with the "0/1" BTW, is #/# the "standard" format for tagging disc numbers? Nice to have a calm discussion here. I had the wolves after me in another forum for expressing my disappointment with the gapless implementation :-)

Luigi

Oh yeah, I forgot. The problem with the Zune device and the disc number was in sorting the tracks like this:

1

1

2

2

3

3

etc.

Luigi

grommet, one other question on the tags. Is the Zune editor writing UTF-16 or ISO-8559-1?

Zune Insider

Welcome, the internet, to another exciting edition of New Music Friday! Ready for some more free tracks

Zuner69

When is the clock/alarm coming out??  How is it possible Microsoft hasn't done this yet?  No wonder the Ipod continue to dominate the Zune in the marketplace.  Apple knows how to deliver what consumers want and demand.  I'm giving it 6 months (I've already waited a year), and then if there is still no clock release, I'm ditching my Zune and going to Apple.

Scott F

I was really disappointed at the Zune 2.5 upgrade process.  First, when I followed the instructions to upgrade, they did not work.  I received a message to use Microsoft Update to upgrade.  I did that, after finding out that Windows Update and Microsoft Update were not the same.  Time wasted.  That was not even the bad part.  Once I installed the update, the Zune software wanted to sync everything in my collection to the Zune again.  This was over 1200 items.  The worst was the podcasts, which it seemed to really mess up.  It was going to transcode everything again and put duplicates in the collection and on the device.  I found that the upgrade did not find that I had set the transcoded files directory different than the default.  Even after switching it back to my setting, the sync problems did not fix themselves.  I finally gave up and deleted all my podcast subscriptions and files from my collection and from the device and starting over.  I needed to resubscribe to them all and mark which ones I had played.  Another couple hours wasted.  There were over 250 downloads to do over and the transcoding will take about two days.  This is worst upgrade experience I have ever had on any software or device I have owned.

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