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

[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.

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!

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.