I have to confess, I didn’t get the whole “badge” thing at first. I’m not a gamer. When I look at my Xbox profile, I see that I’ve played nine games. I think what that actually means is my son has played nine games on my Xbox Live account. And then we got Rock Band, and everything changed. Suddenly, I started telling my kid to play on his own account, not mine. I didn’t want him (he’s WAY better than me; plays on expert on guitar, drums, and bass) to get achievements on my behalf. I kind of lost...

Check out this article on Zune.net about badges, both on your zune card and in the forums. Here's what the gold badges look like: 1000 Album plays 1000 Artist plays 1000 rated forum posts*