Zune's Wireless Almost Totally Worthless

mikesd81 writes to mention an article at Engadget exploring what the Zune's wireless is good for. It turns out that, at least for now, that's not much. From the article: "You can search for and find other Zunes nearby. You can send songs / albums for the 3 x 3 trial. Songs past the three days / listens are deleted at next sync, but catalogued on your PC for record-keeping should you want to purchase them later. No word on whether Microsoft is going to keep track of which files are traded. You can send and receive image files for 'unlimited viewing.' (Oh, so copyrighted images aren't worth DRMing?) You can't: Connect to the internet, Download songs directly from the Zune store via WiFi, Sync to your computer via WiFi."

Comments

Makes me wonder

[Lord_Dweomer]

Whenever I hear about crap DRM like this, it really makes me wonder what kind of technological world we'd live in if we didn't have these restrictions. We'd probably have fully wireless players that could play any format we wanted and could stream songs to anybody around us using a P2P streaming format to distribute the bandwidth/battery power. There would probably be a lot more diverse music going around as well. One can only wonder...

Re:Makes me wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

And the people who created all this content got paid how exactly?

They get the same shitty pay-cheque from the record company as always. The record company executives, on the other hand, are starving in the gutters.

Hey, a man can dream...

Re:Makes me wonder

[Lord_Dweomer]

And the people who created all this content got paid how exactly?

Nice try AC, but they get paid for this content because with the increased sharing, people are exposed to much more new music than they normally would (think P2P effect on speed), and therefore find more bands they like and want to support. Thus, they end up going to see more live shows, and purchasing more merchandise.

For the bands that are smart enough to go with a label that supports sharing, or are Indie, they will thrive because thats where the majority of their income came from in the past and this would amplify that. Remember, traditionally bands really make their money touring, not from music sales which the labels gouge them on.

Re:Makes me wonder

[Mateo_LeFou]

The point of the whole free-culture position is that it does *not make economic sense to purchase what is downloadable for free. We're on the same side of that fence. Those who wish to make money need to find something non-digital to sell. The experience of a live show is one of many hundreds of possible examples.

"The study of economics proposes that people respond to incentives"
---
"According to the econodwarf's vision, each human being is an individual possessing "incentives," which can be retrospectively unearthed by imagining the state of the bank account at various times. So in this instance the econodwarf feels compelled to object that without the rules I am lampooning, there would be no incentive to create the things the rules treat as property: without the ability to exclude others from music there would be no music, because no one could be sure of getting paid for creating it."

"The dwarf's basic problem is that "incentives" is merely a metaphor, and as a metaphor to describe human creative activity it's pretty crummy"

http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/my_pubs/anarchism. html

Re:Makes me wonder

[kfg]

The reason was for preservaton because a 78 RPM records is apparently extrememly easy to play even without much technology.

You don't even need a source of electricity. Put the needle (a real needle, just a sharpened sliver of steel) in the groove and spin the plater. Sound comes out. The process is purely mechanical, not even electromechanical. Electromechanical cartridges are to send an electrical signal to an amplifier, not simply to reproduce the sound.

In early days these things were sold from the back of a van, i.e. a covered wagon.

And because the recording is a phonograph, i.e. it is a visible analog recording, even imaging technology can be used to recover the data.

KFG

selling music via wireless

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't an obvious business model be to sell music over the internet and allow people to buy/download music direct on their media player instead of needing a PC. This makes the device sellable to those without PCs. You can then do deals with wireless hotspot providers to offer your users wireless access like nintendo has done.

Almost totally useless _for users_

[kahei]

For the major stakeholders, i.e. IP holders, it's quite useful. It's just useless to _people_.

I, for one, am happy and proud to be part of this next Microsoft step into the 'products that people actively try and avoid' space. Further initiatives are to include a portable game platform that makes the sound of a crying baby, and a new mouse that randomly fires blasts of deadly, mutagenic radiation, all the time, for no reason. Also Vista.

It's all a difference in philosophy. Old Microsoft was about _giving_ people what they wanted, in the hope that they would then _give_ money in return. They would send people out who would discover needs (like the need for a Euro sign character, which the planet's committees and standards groups never grasped the point of) and then fulfil those needs. This kinda sorta worked a bit, but it was a bit pedestrian. Since 2000, New Microsoft has been focusing on actively _taking_ money out of the marketplace and _avoiding_ giving value in return. The Zune is part of this -- see, it has complex and interesting features, but they're there to prevent you from extracting value from it. It's like when they suddenly started charging for the Office / .NET interop package; they created useful functionality, in such a way that nobody could actually derive benefit from it.

Basically, what MS understands that nobody else on the planet really grasps is that V + P = K, where:

V = value delivered to the rest of the world
P = profit for MS
K = some constant

See how decreasing V is just like increasing P? It's brilliant once you get it. So this Zune serves to drive V down just a little bit further. Next step? PROFIT!!!

When I say 'profit' I must admit I mean 'ever decreasing relevancy'. But that's because I'm not a technical visionary like Steve Ballmer.

Unrealistic?

[CorporalKlinger]

I'm not sure I would *want* to be able to purchase songs via the wifi connection on my Zune. After all; I lose it or one of my friends borrows it for a while, they could really rack up some charges on my account. Sure, you could require a password be entered on the Zune - but with what? The touch wheel? That seems pretty silly to me. Further, there is a complaint about not being able to sync to your PC via wifi. Well, since the majority of wifi networks aren't secure - or require long, difficult to enter wifi keys (again, how do you input a 128-bit, 40-character ASCII WEP key on your Zune - or worse, a WPA key at 64 characters!) Sure, you could set that up on your computer and it would program the wifi settings on the Zune during a sync, but that brings forth the question - who would want to sync via wifi? I don't know - if I'm going to be syncing my unit up, I probably just setup Zune Media Center with a few new files I downloaded... I'm at my PC anyway, what's the big deal about dropping the unit in the dock while I'm there and waiting for it to sync? Most wifi routers in use today are still 11Mbps, too - any idea how long it would take to sync a Zune with even 50 new songs via wifi? I hope you brought your AC adapter - it will be a while. It seems like people are just poking holes in this for the point of poking holes. I mean - internet browsing? Maybe if there's a demand, but already in the USA, most people have internet enabled cell phones with pretty decent screens - and very few take advantage of true internet browsing on their phones. Whatever happens when this is released will be interesting, but I just wish people would stop acting like "they could do it better" - if so, why haven't they - or Sandisk, or Samsung, or Creative...?

How about illegal pictures?

[PontifexPrimus]

What (to use everyone's favorite extreme example) if someone decides to "push" child porn pics on all neighbouring zunes? Can he be identified via a serial number or similar traceback mechanism? Is there any way to "agree" to a transfer or "deny" all but a select few?

What if someone uses a poisoned mp3-file (initially sounds like a very low volume, current pop hit, then abruptly cuts to full volume static or sheetmetal noise)? In most other P2P communities there is either a central oversight (torrents) or a user community rating system (like in eMule) to avoid such malicious behaviour - will Microsoft take responsibility?

Oh, and another thing: Can you imitate a zune using a WLAN access point and send out files this way? Certainly there is right now no software available to do that, but think of the opportunities in the future: stores sending targeted high-tech-ad-jingles or catalog pages to all zune owners in range; anarchists distributing (audio) versions of the anarchists cookbook or recipes for drugs or explosives; political offices sending the (audio) equivalent of leaflets to everyone passing by...

Sounds like a really great idea, if there's anything people want then that's more spam!

Wireless Speed

[Chrononium]

Seems a little silly for me to be (apparently) the only one to notice this, but is it a big deal that you can't sync wirelessly with your computer. Compared to USB2 and Firewire, 802.11g is pathetic speed-wise. Ever try copying a bunch of files onto one of those old USB1 flash drives? Impossibly slow. Wireless (at least in its current popular implementation) is too slow to do full syncs. A song or two is fine and amazingly convenient, but don't think that you can suddenly transfer gigabytes in seconds. The device would run out of power even if you had sufficient patience. Don't hold your breath on Apple somehow magically inventing new wireless technologies, much less new wireless standards.

Re:The Zune Itself Is Worthless

[Zamfir]

I see. So the well-review product that you have never seen is "second rate" and the music store that no one has ever seen is not easy to use. No anti-MS bias here!

Sounds good (and diabolically clever) to me

[dpbsmith]

Sounds diabolically clever to me. Short-distance short-time song sharing sounds to me like something that would really get used if you have friends who have Zunes.

A lot depends on just how that three-day limit works. If you give a song to a friend and it expires, can you give it to him/her again?

I think quite a lot of music might get sold on the basis of short-term trials when the music was, in fact, recommended by a friend.

I can also see a lot of social gratification in being the first kid on the block to have paid for and bought a hot new tune, and therefore being the one who's in the position of being able to give trial versions to everyone else. (If Microsoft is smart, you will be able to give fresh trials over and over. Then the kids who haven't bought the music need to repeatedly go to the kid who has, in order to get their new time-limited free copies.) All of this in turn provides powerful reinforcement for wanting to buy the tune and be the go-to kid.

Actually, you want to do it in a hurry. If kid A gives you a free trial version, and you can afford to buy it, you'd want to buy it quickly, so there are still kids whom A hasn't given it to yet—kids for whom you can be the wealthy song-dispensing patron.

Furthermore, if there are a fair number of Zunes in play in a social group, then the kids with iPods are excluded... they see the kids with Zunes trading tunes and they're out of it, even if the kids with Zunes are their personal friends.

And I don't think these kids are going to spend much time stripping DRM from their music or exploiting the analog hole or anything like that.

The big "if" is whether the Zune garners enough critical mass for any of this to happen. If only two kids in school have Zunes and neither of them is interested in being a social patron of the other, it isn't going to work.

Mind you, this isn't what I want from a "wireless" mp3 player. But that doesn't mean it won't be effective.

Re:Trouble with Wifi?

[nine-times]

It's not about immediate profit, it's about control. Someone is making money in a computer-related market, and Microsoft doesn't control it. They have no piece of the iTunes/iPod action, and apparently they don't like that. They'll be willing to lose money on the venture all the way up until they've established control, and then they'll rake users over the coals once users have been locked into the Microsoft platform.

That's what Microsoft is after these days-- an all inclusive end-to-end dominance on anything resembling a computer. Handhelds, MP3 players, servers, desktops, refrigerators, web browsers, e-mail, game consoles, etc. The result will be that, any emerging computer market, no matter what the market is, will need to go through Microsoft, and Microsoft will dominate it.

Microsoft is not in the business of providing consumer products or OEM software-- they're in the business of dominating markets and eliminating competition.

Re:23rd Century

[WhiteWolf666]

I disagree.

There is a fair amount of material that is not DRM'd.

If you look at the past of human history, you see societies that we know lots about, and societies we know little about.

The societies we know lots about wrote material down in not particularly difficult to translate media.
The societies we know little about wrote down little, and what they did write was indicperiable. They remain a mystery.

Phish, for example, will last for a long time, regardless of whether or not people like it. It's DRM free for copying, so it can remain alive forever.

Metallica, on the other hand, will vanish in the sands of history, because no one will bother with a player that can run the discs, and after the last encryption code vanishes, no one will bother to decrypt it, except as a potential academic product in the annals of some obscure journal.

We won't see the whole 20th century go into the darkness. We will see GPL code that lives in the future as library/museum type stuff, while Windows will only live on in pictures/videos.