Although you can’t buy it yet, Microsoft has gone public with details about its much-anticipated
Zune MP3 player. It’ll hold 30GB of music in the MP3, AAC, and WMA formats, with a Wi-Fi connection that will let you send songs directly to other Zune users. They get three free listens of the song, after which they’ll have to purchase the song a la carte, or, if they’re a "Zune Pass" subscriber, download it free of charge as part of their monthly subscription plan. This could lead to a viral adoption of the player; if two of your friends have a Zune, you might be convinced to join them after watching them zap recommended songs back and forth.
The Zune supports on-the-go playlist creation, lets you play slideshows as you listen to music, plays WMV, MPEG-4, and H.264 videos, receives FM radio, and comes in white, black, or brown, as I reported here earlier. An optional car kit comes with an "FM tuner," which I take to mean "transmitter" (the Zune has a tuner built in), which auto-seeks the channel with the least interference for playing music over your car stereo. [tag]Zune MP3[/tag]Listening Post