Geekfoolery

Microsoft announced this past week that they have sold (Dr. Evil laugh)….One Million Zunes!

Uh sure, great job there, Zune (golf clap). A million isn’t a paltry number, it’s just not exactly blowing the barn doors off any of the major players out there, and it certainly doesn’t seem to making a dent in Apple’s iPod numbers.

Meanwhile, an quick update on Zunewatch 2007, my experiment to see if the signature feature of the Zune, its Wifi capability can be used. Microsoft intends that Zune users will gather and share music in social settings, hence the brilliant (ahem) marketing slogan “Welcome to the Social.” My goal is simply to count how many Zunes I see “in the wild” so I will know how many other people are out there that I can meet and swap songs with. Because that’s all the Wifi on the Zune is good for, basically, and without other Zune users, it’s a bit like having one walkie-talkie.

So after 5 full months since Zunewatch 2007 began on January 1st, here is my grand total of Zune users I have spotted out and about, at the gym, walking down the street, in airports and at the mall:

Zero.

So at this point, if I were to buy a Zune, I would be welcome at the Social, it is just unlikely that I would be able to FIND it.

Meanwhile, Apple got a lot of press this week by doing something that is about as anti-Zune as you can get. Apple started selling on its iTunes Music Store songs without any Digital Rights Management at all. In a deal announced earlier with EMI, songs on that label are now optionally available without the Fairplay DRM that iTMS store normally uses. The DRM-free songs are also encoded at a higher quality, and they cost 30 cents more. But the difference is that you can play these songs on any device that plays AAC files, which includes, by the way, the Microsoft Zune.

I describe the move as anti-Zune because the Microsoft in general and the Zune in particular seem to do bend over backwards to meet the record label’s requirement that no song be sold electronically without some kind of DRM. Consider this: If you did buy a track from the iTMS store on EMI that was DRM free, just a quick f’rinstance, K. T. Tunstall’s “Suddenly I See.” You’ve got it on your Zune in glorious unrestricted AAC, and you love it. If by some bizarre happenstance you were to run into another Zune owner, and you used the Wifi to send it to them, that very act of sending the file to your friend would wrap it in some kind of Zune-wrapper which gives your friend 3 days or 3 plays.

Much has been written about the many shortcomings of the Zune, and I won’t rehash them here. Word is that Zune 2.0 is going to come out, and like all whole point upgrades, we all know that “Yeah! THAT’S going to fix EVERYTHING!” And we also know that Microsoft always takes at least until Version 3.0 to get it right.

While the various committees and 3rd-generation round of managers take over the Zune in Redmond and decide that it might be a good idea to make a flash-based Zune or open up the Wifi a bit, things that are generally taught in the “bleeding obvious product deficiencies” courses in most MBA programs, Apple is going to move ahead with the next revolution in electronic music.

EMI is quite likely the first of several labels to offer DRM-free music via the iTMS. Apple expects to announce others later in the year, and I am hoping that this movement gains momentum and we see all music sold, not just on iTMS, DRM-free in a couple years.

DRM was supposed to prevent piracy. It has been about as effective at stopping piracy as trying to stop a swarm of bees at a picnic with a shotgun. Every now and then, you might knock out a bee, but in the meantime, you’ve probably tagged at least half a dozen picnic guests. Some people accused Apple of created a closed system with iPod/Fairplay/iTMS, but that’s always been questionable at best. Although songs bought on iTMS have until now only played on iPods, a great many people have iPods and use iTunes who never buy music and simply play plain old MP3s.

So what exactly becomes of Apple, or even Zune for that matter, if suddenly the DRM is gone and you can use any player you want and buy music from whoever you want? Is this going to break the iron grip that Apple has on the music player market?

My opinion is no. Apple’s “iron grip” on the MP3 player market really hasn’t been based on it’s closed system. It’s been the ease of use and great industrial design. That has been the iPods–and Apple’s–crown jewel since the company began. Does the fact that my copy of “Suddenly I See” will now play on a Zune make me want to go buy one?

Eh, no. I’ll let someone else be number 1,000,001.

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