Zune Pass

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darthzew

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The number one reason I think the Zune is better than the iPod is the Zune Pass. What is a Zune Pass, Mr. Darth?

For fifteen dollars a month, you can download all the music you want. Millions upon millions of songs are available to you to download whenever you want. The best part is that it's all legal.

Sounds too god to be true, right?

Well, there is a catch, you see. If you ever cancel this subscription, you lose it all. All of the songs you downloaded using the subscription are locked. You have to keep paying in order to keep playing.

But let's do some math. The cost of the average album is ten dollars (800 Microsoft points). A Zune Pass is fifteen dollars, basically one and a half albums. In three months, I've downloaded about one-thousand-five-hundred songs, which is basically 150 albums, a 150 dollar value.

So, for 45 dollars I've gotten 150 dollars worth of music. And that gap between what I pay and how much the music's worth will only grow exponentially over time. Wow.

And then Microsoft gives you ten songs to keep. Forever. Even if you cancel the subscription, those ten songs are yours. This is a ten dollar value.

So, basically you're really spending five dollars for all the music you want (if you look at it from a certain point of a view). 15 dollars for 1500 songs? I'm sold.

While the Zune's superior interface and better Marketplace usability is certainly up for the debate, I don't see how you could argue with a Zune Pass as being the best way to get music legally.

Please, discuss and debate this.

What do you think of the Zune Pass and would you consider getting a Zune with this in mind?
 

jasoncyrus

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Well that service seems kind of fraudulant tbh. Not genuine fraudulant, just nasty mofo kind of fraudulant. Like ripping off old people with huge prices kind of fraudulant.

I'd personally stick with simply buying the cd and manually ripping it legally for my own personal use. That way it cant be restricted (like the ipod did for a while) or locked.

Plus, screw paying subs for music. In the long its actually way better to buy the songs singly since they wont be locked and it'll probably add up to about the same price.

But hey, if you wanna throw your cash away on a rip off service, be my guest =)

Edit: Wow...10 WHOLE songs =O I'm ssooo sold! [/sarcasm]

One phrase: Borrow friends cd, rip it, free music.
 

smithy1234

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Theres this thing out there and it's called "Torrents". It's an odd fantastical thing, perhaps you should try them one day as an alternative to your Zune Pass dilemma. Oh by the way, it's all free.
 

Deef

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doxcology said:
Theres this thing out there and it's called "Torrents". It's an odd fantastical thing, perhaps you should try them one day as an alternative to your Zune Pass dilemma. Oh by the way, it's all free.
He's gonna say that's illegal.
BUT WAIT! IT'S ONLY ILLEGAL TO DISTRIBUTE THESE FILES!
So yeah.
 

Deef

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darthzew said:
The number one reason I think the Zune is better than the iPod is the Zune Pass. What is a Zune Pass, Mr. Darth?

For fifteen dollars a month, you can download all the music you want. Millions upon millions of songs are available to you to download whenever you want. The best part is that it's all legal.

Sounds too god to be true, right?

Well, there is a catch, you see. If you ever cancel this subscription, you lose it all. All of the songs you downloaded using the subscription are locked. You have to keep paying in order to keep playing.

But let's do some math. The cost of the average album is ten dollars (800 Microsoft points). A Zune Pass is fifteen dollars, basically one and a half albums. In three months, I've downloaded about one-thousand-five-hundred songs, which is basically 150 albums, a 150 dollar value.

So, for 45 dollars I've gotten 150 dollars worth of music. And that gap between what I pay and how much the music's worth will only grow exponentially over time. Wow.

And then Microsoft gives you ten songs to keep. Forever. Even if you cancel the subscription, those ten songs are yours. This is a ten dollar value.

So, basically you're really spending five dollars for all the music you want (if you look at it from a certain point of a view). 15 dollars for 1500 songs? I'm sold.

While the Zune's superior interface and better Marketplace usability is certainly up for the debate, I don't see how you could argue with a Zune Pass as being the best way to get music legally.

Please, discuss and debate this.

What do you think of the Zune Pass and would you consider getting a Zune with this in mind?
I was looking over your math, and I think it would actually be a 1500 dollar value.

But with torrents you could get that without the subscription.
 

smithy1234

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Deef said:
doxcology said:
Theres this thing out there and it's called "Torrents". It's an odd fantastical thing, perhaps you should try them one day as an alternative to your Zune Pass dilemma. Oh by the way, it's all free.
He's gonna say that's illegal.
BUT WAIT! IT'S ONLY ILLEGAL TO DISTRIBUTE THESE FILES!
So yeah.
YAYYY FOR LOOP HOLES IN THE JUSTICE SYSTEM!!!
 

Bored Tomatoe

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I just like the zune because of its interface, the marketplace layout, and the smugness of having something other than an Ipod.
 

darthzew

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Deef said:
doxcology said:
Theres this thing out there and it's called "Torrents". It's an odd fantastical thing, perhaps you should try them one day as an alternative to your Zune Pass dilemma. Oh by the way, it's all free.
He's gonna say that's illegal.
BUT WAIT! IT'S ONLY ILLEGAL TO DISTRIBUTE THESE FILES!
So yeah.
I'm not going to tread on the toes of what's illegal or not; I'm not a lawyer.

But I want to pay for my music in some way or another. I feel like the artists deserve at least something from me. Fifteen dollars a month is not much to ask.
 

darthzew

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jasoncyrus said:
One phrase: Borrow friends cd, rip it, free music.
Counter-phrase: no friends like People in Planes or The Bad Plus.

There's that, and everyone's getting their music electronically here. I'm not gonna buy a crapload of CD-Rs and have them all burn me CDs. That's just too much effort when I can get a better value with just a click or two.
 

jasoncyrus

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darthzew said:
Deef said:
doxcology said:
Theres this thing out there and it's called "Torrents". It's an odd fantastical thing, perhaps you should try them one day as an alternative to your Zune Pass dilemma. Oh by the way, it's all free.
He's gonna say that's illegal.
BUT WAIT! IT'S ONLY ILLEGAL TO DISTRIBUTE THESE FILES!
So yeah.
I'm not going to tread on the toes of what's illegal or not; I'm not a lawyer.

But I want to pay for my music in some way or another. I feel like the artists deserve at least something from me. Fifteen dollars a month is not much to ask.
Yes, yes it is. Especially since most "music" is a load of crud these days. *cough*eurovision*cough*.

Plus you've totally missed the point of my post. Locked files = customer abuse. You may aswell rent a cdr from your mates.

At least if you got cdrs burned you'dbe able to keep the bloody things.
 

TaborMallory

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Darth Mobius said:
TaborMallory said:
However nice this sounds, I'm a sucker for actually having the real CD in my hands.
This. Exactly this, since I don't have an iPoo or Zune. (I REALLY want a Zune, I just can't afford one right now...) My car has a CD player, so I use that instead of anything else.
I like my iPoo; it's fairly durable, it has a fantastic battery life, and it's got an 80gb hard drive so I can store files on it. It's got a bigger HDD than our computer...
 

chunkydude84

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TaborMallory said:
However nice this sounds, I'm a sucker for actually having the real CD in my hands.
This. Nothing quite like having the genuine article at arms reach.

Oh, and Zune kicks ass. Got a thirty gig for forty bucks.
 

Virgil

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darthzew said:
What do you think of the Zune Pass and would you consider getting a Zune with this in mind?
I have a Zune, and the Zune Pass, and I think it's fantastic.

One thing to note is that one subscription can be used on three PCs and two Zune devices. My wife and I share the same account, and can each download whatever music we like. That actually makes it an even better value for us.

The nice thing about having the subscription is that there are a lot of albums I wouldn't buy, but that I might want to listen to once or twice. I can either download them, or stream them and listen to the full album online (including from the Zune player if I have a wi-fi connection).

I don't care that the music will go away if I stop subscribing, because in order to purchase the music I've downloaded, I'd have to spend thousands of dollars. Which isn't going to happen, subscription or not, so all I would "lose" is something I never would have had in the first place.

darthzew said:
But I want to pay for my music in some way or another. I feel like the artists deserve at least something from me. Fifteen dollars a month is not much to ask.
The subscription music plans pay licensing fees for the music to the labels, who then have to distribute it to the artists. It works similarly to radio in that regard. Unless you only buy your CDs at concerts, you're just as likely to get money to the artists on a subscription plan as you are buying the music outright.
 

chunkydude84

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TaborMallory said:
I like my iPoo; it's fairly durable, it has a fantastic battery life, and it's got an 80gb hard drive so I can store files on it. It's got a bigger HDD than our computer...
Why in the name of all that is holy do you need EIGHTY GIGS?
 

TaborMallory

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chunkydude84 said:
TaborMallory said:
I like my iPoo; it's fairly durable, it has a fantastic battery life, and it's got an 80gb hard drive so I can store files on it. It's got a bigger HDD than our computer...
Why in the name of all that is holy do you need EIGHTY GIGS?
I took up about 10 gigs for music, 1 gig for miscellaneous video clips, and the rest as an external hard drive. It's really nice to have, because our computer has a 75 gb hard drive and I have a very nice portable hard drive.
 

Virgil

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chunkydude84 said:
Why in the name of all that is holy do you need EIGHTY GIGS?
I've got around 35gb of music on mine at the moment, plus some video on top of that. Of course, I have the subscription plan, so I can download just about anything I want - I don't actually *listen* to all of it all the time.

Sometimes you just want to hear stuff that isn't in your normal playlists though, so it's nice to have.
 

chunkydude84

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TaborMallory said:
I took up about 10 gigs for music, 1 gig for miscellaneous video clips, and the rest as an external hard drive. It's really nice to have, because our computer has a 75 gb hard drive and I have a very nice portable hard drive.
Doubling as an external hard drive, eh? Well, that makes sense. For a minute I thought you had a ridiculous amount of music.