![]() iTunes looks pretty plain next to it, and Zune offers a greater array of opportunities for music discovery and social interaction. In any case Zune 3.0 ups the ante on software interfaces for music players. iTunes 8's Genius similarly lets you preview only 30 seconds of a song, so making unrestricted MixView previews free would give Microsoft an advantage over Apple in one important respect. That feature, in my opinion, is the biggest draw of the software, and it is disappointing that you cannot access the full version of it without paying. If Microsoft wants Zune to be a strong contender in the MP3 player market, it should make the full MixView available for free. Unfortunately, when I tried to access it, I got a 'Zune Marketplace Is Unavailable' notice multiple times. One of my searches produced a playlist with the enticing title "Scandinavian Darkness Mixtape". When you search for an artist in the Marketplace, you get a list of songs and albums by that artist, as well as preloaded playlists. I ran into errors in other areas as well, such as in the new Playlist feature. The Marketplace wouldn't load for me a couple of times and the MixView and Social areas occasionally loaded very slowly. I bought a Zune Pass so that I could test everything 3.0 had to offer, but I couldn't log into my account for about half an hour after buying it, due to a server error. When I tested it, the software still had some bugs. ![]() Just be careful not too zone out too much, because it can be quite hypnotic. If nothing else, it serves as a nice distraction from whatever you're doing on your computer. The full-screen interface shows various artist photos and displays facts and biographical information. Even if you don't own a Zune and never intend to buy one, you can use this feature for your music collection on your PC. As a result, I didn't spend much time looking at their music libraries.Ī cool - and completely free - feature is the improved Now Playing screen. Connecting music fans to one another is a nice touch, the feature wasn't especially useful in my case, as many supposedly "like-minded" listeners actually had very different music preferences from mine. You can view recent plays from their collection as well as favourites and top artists. Images of listeners from the Zune Social community will also automatically pop up along with the recommended music. If you pick Willie Nelson in Pandora, the only suggestion you get is Waylon Jennings and if you don't want to listen to Waylon Jennings, you have to skip to the next song. For example, if you pick Willie Nelson in MixView, you immediately have the option of playing Waylon Jennings, the Smoking Popes, or Hank Williams. And its multidirectional recommendations expand your universe of possibilities far more quickly than Pandora's linear suggestions do. ![]() Aesthetically, it does a spectacular job of mapping out song, artist, and album relations graphically. I could spend hours clicking through the MixView, and I found its recommendations right on target with my tastes. MixView is a lot of fun if you like to geek out on music history and learn about who influenced who. You retain access to the songs as long as your Zune Pass is current.) ![]() (With a Zune Pass you can download and stream an unlimited number of songs from the Zune Marketplace, the online music and video store, at a flat rate of US$15 per month. To hear the full version of the song, you must be a Zune Pass subscriber. Double-clicking on the image lets you hear a 30-second clip of the associated song and gives you the option to purchase it. Click on one of the surrounding images, and a new display appears. Pick an album or an artist in MixView, and images of related content - such as albums, individual tracks, and artists - blossom around it. Whether to participate actively in the community is up to you. When you download Zune 3.0, you can create an individual username that identifies you in the Social community of Zune. But Zune's algorithm engine includes an element that Genius lacks: It also draws from a social community. Like Genius, MixView makes additional music recommendations based on songs within your library and based on the software's associated online music and video store, the Zune Marketplace. Zune's MixView is Microsoft's answer to Apple iTunes' new Genius feature, which allows you to automatically generate playlists. ![]()
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