Map Of Zunes

This week's awesome Zune news continues with this sweet offer from Best Buy, check it:

If you're in Canada (high-five, Phil!), head over to BestBuy.ca: if you buy a Zune 16, you get a Zune 4. For free. Details here.

Happy shopping!

As you've no doubt have read, we made some exciting enhancements to the already-solid Zune Pass: you can now keep 10 tracks. So that begs the question: what tracks are you keeping. Hence, this quickpoll.

Just list the tracks you've decided to keep with your Zune Pass, if you have one. I'll start:

This month, I downloaded the 10 tracks in Sea Wolf's first full-length record, Leaves in the River. My favorite track "You're a Wolf."

And what about you dear reader? Leave a comment with your 10 Picks!

It seems that the 10 free song announcement brought forth plenty of questions, and with that comes answers. To begin with, and perhaps most important is that your Zune Pass is not really changing, you will still have everything you...

“Zunerama has a great FAQ on Zune's new subscription model of Zune Pass + 10 free songs to keep per month. Inspired by the FAQ and in part by an email conversation with some friends (thanks Mike), I thought I would contribute a few thoughts by walking myself (and by proxy you) through the process of using these new credits on two albums in the Zune Marketplace and seeing where we end up.”

So I could take the time to walk everyone through all of the details of the surprising new 10 free songs feature. But Zunerama and Social Circle have done such a great job on their FAQs and walkthroughs that I’ll just redirect everyone to look at those instead! Zunerama’s FAQ is a great 10 question FAQ that just explains the basics and I think probably answers some of the confusion about this feature. The Social Circle walkthrough takes you through, complete with pictures, the process of getting tracks for both DRM and non-DRM tracks.

Both of these I think you’ll find invaluable resources to getting your monthly downloads as easily as you can!

Since the launch of the new Zune Pass, I've gotten a few questions from folks. For a quick how-to, be sure to check out the screenshot tutorial over at Inside the Circle. And Harv from 'rama did a great job in summarizing these - I ran his list by the product team and here's what I got:

1. What’s the catch here?
No catch. You get everything you always got with your Zune Pass (i.e. unlimited access to Marketplace subscription tracks, for as long as you maintain your subscription), plus your choice of 10 tracks to keep every month.

2. If I don’t download my ten tracks this month, can I download twenty next month? In other words, do the ten free downloads carry over from month to month?
No, there is no rollover of the ten downloads from one month to the next. Download your selected ten tracks each month; next month you’ll be able to download ten more.

3. Is the ‘free downloads’ offer retroactive from when I started my Zune Pass?
No, it starts now. Each month from this month forward, you get ten free downloads. And if you are a current subscriber, you get all your 10 tracks immediately regardless of your renewal date. Cool!

4. How do I download the ten free tracks?
Right-click on the track you want, and select ‘buy’ or ‘add to cart’. If you have a Zune Pass, each month you will have a ten-item credit in your account to use for this.

5. Are the free tracks in WMA or in MP3 format?
That depends on the song. About 90% of Marketplace tracks are available in DRM-free MP3 format. So chances are you’ll be getting a drm-free mp3

6. Can I burn the downloaded tracks to CD?
Yes! You can burn them, just like you can with any other purchased content. The downloaded track works just like one that you purchased from Zune marketplace: you can burn it, sync it to your Zune, or more

7. I sync my Zune Pass tracks to several players and PCs. How many free downloads do I get?
You get ten free downloads per account. Having several Zune players and PCs tied to that account doesn’t affect the number of downloads that you get.

8. How much does a Zune Pass cost?
No change here: it’s still $14.99 per month. For that you get access to all Zune Marketplace subscription tracks, and your ten free keep-it-forever download tracks

9. How do I get a Zune Pass? Can I get a free trial of it?
You can sign up for a Zune Pass here. You can also get a 14-day free trial.

10. When does my 1-month start? On the first, or the day I first signed up with my zunepass?
On the first day of signing up for your Zunepass

Ok - happy downloading!

If you have a Zune Pass, it's not immediately obvious how you claim your ten free song credits, so since I have a three-month Zune Pass trial (courtesy of a kind soul on the Zune Team), I figured I'd see how this worked. When you see a song you want, you click on the Download button like you normally would. Only instead of just downloading the track, you'll see the pop-up windw above, which gives you the option to use a song credit or just download it as part of your Zune Pass account. If you click Use Credit, one of your ten credits will be used. Here's the weird thing I noticed though: nowhere in the process does it show you/tell you what format the song is in, MP3 or DRM'd WMA. If, when you're browsing the album you see the small MP3 icon, the download will be in MP3 format. If you don't see the MP3 icon, the download will be in DRM'd WMA format. An even though 90% of the catalog is in MP3 format, it didn't take me long to find an album that was in the WMA DRM'd format.

I'm really liking this 10 free tracks a month deal, but the Zune team shouldn't hide the fact that some tracks are DRM'd. I don't consider any music truly mind to keep as long as it's poisoned by DRM, because as we've seen several times this year, all it takes to make that music stop working is for a company to decide they're going to turn off their DRM server.

I had no idea until grommet mentioned it in our forums that the 10 song credit was for ANY music in the Zune library and not just for music part of their subscription service. That turns what is a pretty neat feature into something that’s “woah” to me. If you buy at least 10 tracks of digital music a month anyway then the cost of a Zune Pass on top of that becomes much more palatable. I have to say I’m still very surprised that Microsoft is doing this. This is definitely a huge deal in my eyes and something they need to promote heavily.

That said, what are you all buying with your first 10 tracks? We only have a week to do it really since the tracks don’t carry over and there’s no time like the present! I knew instantly what I was going to buy anyway. Metallica’s “Black” album. It has 12 tracks so I went ahead and bought the final two tracks to get the whole thing. Anyone think that a lot of people may do something similar and end up buying music anyway to get the whole album?

Here are answers to commonly-asked questions about the new Zune Pass subscription model, which became available at 11pm Pacific last night. With this enhancement, you not only get subscription access to tracks from Zune Marketplace - you also get ten tracks per month, for keeps!

1. What’s the catch here?

There doesn’t seem to be a catch. You get everything you always got with your Zune Pass (i.e. unlimited access to Marketplace subscription tracks, for as long as you maintain your subscription), plus your choice of tracks to keep every month.

2. If I don’t download my ten tracks this month, can I download twenty next month? In other words, do the ten free downloads carry over from month to month?

No, there is no rollover of the ten downloads from one month to the next. Download your selected ten tracks each month; next month you’ll be able to download ten more.

3. Is the ‘free downloads’ offer retroactive from when I started my Zune Pass?

No, it starts now. Each month from this month forward, you get ten free downloads.

4. How do I download the ten free tracks?

Right-click on the track you want, and select ‘buy’ or ‘add to cart’. If you have a Zune Pass, each month you will have a ten-item credit in your account to use for this.

5. Are the free tracks in WMA or in MP3 format?

You can download them in whatever formats are available in Zune Marketplace. (Right now, 90% of Marketplace tracks are available in both WMA and in MP3 format.)

6. Can I burn the downloaded tracks to CD?

Yes! You can burn them, just like you can with any other purchased content. See the Zune terms of service for details - there are some limits to how many times you can burn a particular playlist, for example.

7. I sync my Zune Pass tracks to several players and PCs. How many free downloads do I get?

You get ten free downloads per account. Having several Zune players and PCs tied to that account doesn’t affect the number of downloads that you get.

8. Are the downloaded songs DRM-free?

The MP3 versions are DRM-free. The WMA versions have DRM controls and may not sync to non-Zune players.

9. How much does a Zune Pass cost?

No change here: it’s still $14.99 per month. For that you get access to all Zune Marketplace subscription tracks, and your ten free keep-it-forever download tracks.

10. How do I get a Zune Pass? Can I get a free trial of it?

You can sign up for a Zune Pass here. You can also get a 14-day free trial.

Got other questions? Got answers? Join our discussion about the new Zune Pass!

Comments

Beginning today, Zune Pass users will have another great reason to enjoy the service. They will now get to keep (forever!) 10 tracks every month from the Marketplace. Not a bad deal, this would be like getting around $10 worth...

I've already been singing the praises of Zune Pass for two years now. I loved Yahoo's all you can eat downloads and I really love Zune Pass. Now it's even better. You can "own" 10 songs per month with Zune Pass. Basically, your $15/mo is buying 10 songs now, but an added bonus... you can download all the DRM content you want too. Nice.

Effective Thursday, the software company's modified subscription plan would allow owners of Zune to keep 10 tracks per month, which has an estimated value of $10. The users can also add those tracks to their permanent collection.

The company said agreements have been signed with the big four music labels -- EMI Music, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group -- and also with a few independent distributors.

Source : Rueters via Email Tip from Robert (GotZune Reader). Thanks Robert.

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