Coming Soon: A New Zune

(page 2 of 2)

Now they'll still only get three plays, but the songs will never time out.

Microsoft says it's also adding 1 million songs without copy protection to the Zune Marketplace, the online store that connects to Zune players. The company wouldn't name the labels that are contributing the music, but Allard says they include "headline content." Both Universal Music and EMI Music Publishing have recently provided music without copy protection to online stores.

The store itself also gets a facelift, with a cleaner look. It now includes a beefy section of artist influences intended to help users discover new tunes. Unlike iTunes, there aren't any downloadable movies or TV shows, though users can buy music videos. But Zune can now connect to PCs that run Windows Media Center, which can record TV programs. So it's possible to get any TV content without an additional charge.

Low Expectations

Perhaps the weakest piece of Zune's business since launch has been the software to which the device connects on PCs. For large music collections, it's painfully slow, sucking up computer resources as users configure and navigate their tunes. Allard acknowledges the problem. "We heard that from a lot of folks," Allard says. "So we started from scratch." In demonstrations, the new software is much peppier, snapping from one artist to the next.

Microsoft also unveiled Zune Social, an online community where folks can keep tabs on the music others are playing. Each page will have something called a Zune Card, which includes users' online names along with their most frequently listened to and most recently listened to songs. Those lists update dynamically as folks play their music. The features have some similarities to iLike, a social networking service that lets users share their musical tastes (BusinessWeek, 7/23/07) with friends.

For Microsoft, the expectations of Zune, version two, aren't likely to be any better than last year's model. And it's a pretty good bet that Microsoft will meet those expectations as well.

Greene is BusinessWeek's Seattle bureau chief.
With Arik Hesseldahl in New York.