Link's busted.

Connect your Zune to your xBox Live account, gain XBL market points for sharing songs, get even more points when your buddies buy songs that you shared with them. Yadda yadda yadda, I would put money on this being another Airmiles-like reward.

My biggest question, will XBL marketplace carry music that you can transmit to your Zune?

If you can find another person within 5 square miles who has a Zune, you'll deserve a commission.

ouch weatherman, ouch....
lol.

Regardless of how this turns out, the concept is not new and is the primary business model for WeedShare (http://weedshare.com/) that does in fact pay you if someone buys a track you shared with them.

The next logical step is what MS is/might be doing which is enabling the share over the device.

I'm only pissed I didn't think of this first.

haha, now w/ j chen gone to kotaku i can make fun of the zune! it sux. the ipod is where it is for a reason. its gonna take better than a reskinned gigabeat to dethrone it. 2, the wifi sux, its completely crippled. and whats this reward system they're proposing? microsoft points? if there's one complaint i have about the xbox, its goddam mp and the fact that i gotta dish out 50 bux a year for live

Zhao, what you been smokin? Old socks? The only people who claimed that the Zune was supposed to kill the iPod were fanboys! Besides, most of us use WiFi everyday and find it quite useful. It does not suck. MS is just trying something new that shouldn't offend your delicate feelings. We know deep down you really want to get your hands on a Zune, hug it, play with it, love it. Hehehehe! :)

Actually Penchum, the wifi as it will be utilized in the Zune will suck, because as Zhao said it will be crippled (i.e. not entirely functional). Nice try though.

Maybe this whitepaper is the reason rumor began in the first place ? :)

djdare
I've been looking around trying to find out why people are saying the wifi will be crippled. All I have been able to find is that some features of Zune's wifi have recently been dumped from the speculation pile. Now speculation seems to show some features that use wifi will be added as time goes on. I'm not sure if I would consider this "crippled". It may just be me, but "crippled" seems to imply that the hardware is not fully capable, where as this sounds more like software (OS) is not fully functional but will be later on. There is a lot of tricky wording going on with regards to Zune's wifi and features. Can't wait to see what is fact and what is not. :)

Buy the potential, not the product. Microsoft has a history of coming into a market with an early iteration of something and then slapping multiple updates on it to usually double or even triple its functionality in the first year.

I'm buying one because I have an xbox 360, having a PMP, console, and my PC all working together happily is something that gets my inner geek aroused. With the hint of a zune phone... that just makes me want to start building my little microsoft centered gadget collection even more.

I've already linked my xbox to my PC with media player 11 and the Zune marketplace software will do that as well, I currently listen to my subscription music from Rhapsody on my xbox while i'm playing which gives me a downright massive music library for 10 bucks a month. If the Zune software works like rhapsody (and everything seems to point to it doing just that), I'll have a small subscription fee to pay and I'll have a huge library of music I can listen to on the go with my Zune, on my PC at home or work when I'm on that, or on my Xbox when I'm gaming and I'll be able to manage it from any of those devices.

That sort of interoperability is the future of gadgetry.

You wouldn't give any credit to anyone who hated on an iPod if they hadn't tried it, so why do people even pay attention to anyone who talks about the Zune?

Good point, tony.

"I hate the iPod because Apple made it, and because uhm, it sucks, and I've never used one, and why would I need all that storage? and it sucks again."

Pretty much sounds like every fanboy's argument against the Zune, save that I cleverly snuck in their favorite company's name. I'm so sneaky.

I found that document by accident back in July and wrote two articles on the new Microsoft DRM below. I have had them cited as part of Wikipedia for months but someone has removed them a few times as if they don't want the information seen. I believe it revealing that Cesar answered this rumor so fast when others have been allowed to go on for much longer. I think they will definitely offer this as well as user generated content sales in future versions of the Zune but they don't want us talking about it at all. Hopefully our discussing it will bring it about sooner.

http://www.zunemax.com/category/drm/