I had some free time the other day, and thought I would get some “interesting” music from the Zune Marketplace on my pass. With “over 3 million songs” in the catalog, these things might turn up. I actually found one of the albums: Kraftwerk’s Autobahn. This obscure album somehow managed to get the only popular track blacklisted from the Zune Pass. I would have to pay more money to downloadthe relatively popular track from the album while the rest of the album was available on the Pass. I checked early albums of the Doors, the Stones, other artists. Apparently, Microsoft has decided that if a track ever had more than a handful of listeners on the radio, or sold some albums, it would be much too valuable for those scruffy Zune Pass subscribers. Same thing for new releases from slightly-known artists. At this point I am idly wondering if the Zune Pass still covers “over a million” tracks. Is it possible that Microsoft should update that effusive marketing hype? My survey of the Zune marketplace showed about 1% coverage of tracks (and I had to really look for those) which would translate to about 30,000 tracks. Somehow the real figures just wouldn’t sound the same.

In this post, blogger discusses the downfalls of the Zune Pass.  So, is the Zune Pass really worth it?  Let us know.

-Jameson

[Source: Walter Lounsbery]

This entry was posted on Monday, July 14th, 2008 at 2:40 pm and is filed under Zune Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.