A price drop for the Zune has been rumored for quite some time, and now it’s official. Cesar Menendez over at Zune Insider explains:

Some of you may have already heard, but tomorrow we’re dropping the suggested retail price for Zune to $199. It’s part of the normal product lifecycle, something we’ve had on the books for months. We just got some research back and customer satisfaction with the 30GB device is really high (around 94%) and we expect even more consumers will now want to discover the Zune experience at the new lower price.

Engadget says, there’s “a whole heaping helping of irony that the Zune is getting a price slash on the very day Apple is ostensibly outing brand new iPods.” Regardless, we’ll take the price cut, thanks!

Does the price cut mean that new Zunes are just around the corner? Hope so!

Podcasting support is coming to the Zune! Though as the Zune Luv guys point out, it was always a matter of when, not if. Here’s the news from Whiz Byte:

Features – we’ll move towards parity with iPod building in support for video, podcasting, etc and at the same time build on key differentiators such as the wireless feature, the FM tuner, etc.

The other two areas of focus for expanding the Zune are device family (sizes, styles, etc.) and geographic markets.

Here’s what Cesar at Zune Insider had to say about the story:

We have not confirmed any new devices or features. We have, for several months, been saying that we intend to develop the Zune business along three axes - expanding our device offering, adding new features and scenarios and considering new international markets when the time is right.

Somewhat vague, but essentially a confirmation.

Will a new Zune with podcasting support be in stores by Christmas? There’s a good chance the answer to that question is yes. Stay tuned!

Today Microsoft released financial figures for the fiscal year ended June 30th. Notably, they announced that annual revenue has surpassed $51 billion. As you can imagine, that gigantic figure is attracting lots of attention, meaning that this announcement from Microsoft’s Cesar Menendez has been somewhat hidden:

Today on the earnings call Microsoft announced that Zune has achieved our goal of one million units sold in, as well as Microsoft earning over $50 billion in annual revenue. We actually went above and beyond our goal: we sold 1.2 million units.

That’s good news for the Zune team! In the comments on that post, Brian points out that Zune’s sales are probably lower than iPod’s in the first year, though it is difficult to compare (given the differences in the size of the market).

Time for a new goal Zune team!

A couple of Zune news items for today. ClicZune reported earlier that the Zune Marketplace DRM has been hacked! BoingBoing has the details:

Abdul sez, “A new version of FairUse4WM v1.3 Fix2 from Doom9 is available that claims to remove the DRM license protection from songs and music downloaded from Microsoft’s Zune Marketplace allowing you to play them on any portable media player.”

You can read the doom9 posting here. Users are reporting mixed results, but for the most part, it seems legit.

Also today, a press release from Microsoft announcing that Zune will “have a significant presence at 28 Live Nation concert venues” in the US this summer.

Zune will have a strong on-site presence with its Zune Spots, inviting consumers to try the devices and see the latest summer colors. The innovative Zune Spots are actually converted freight containers that have been redesigned to bring the brand to life for concertgoers.

For more information, check out Zune.net and LiveNation.com. Also, here’s the Wikipedia entry for Live Nation.

I’m sure you know about the Zune’s wireless music sharing capabilities, but I bet you didn’t know that Microsoft wants to pay you a commission when someone purchases a song you have shared! I didn’t either, until I saw this post over at ZuneScene describing a recently discovered Microsoft patent application:

According to the patent, Microsoft would like to erect a system by which pirated music (yes the term pirated is used in the document several times) can be transferred to other Zune devices, and the sender can be paid a sales commission. Of course this would work with legally obtained music also.

Apparently the idea is to make pirated music “encrypted” when shared with another Zune. If I understand this correctly, it works like this. I have a DRM-free song on my Zune and I send it to your Zune. You can then play the song three times, before you have to purchase it. When you do, Zune Marketplace, me, and the copyright holder all get paid.

Converting illegal music into legal music is an interesting concept, but I am not sure how well such a system would work in practice.

You can view the patent details here.

Microsoft announced today a series of summer events called Zune Live at the BBQ which aim to “celebrate hip-hop music and the community that surrounds it.” Here are the details on tickets and artists:

The concert hits Los Angeles on July 12, Chicago on July 22, and New York City on Aug. 4. Viral invitations will be sent to fans, and they will be asked to register at a special Web site to receive their ticket.

Artists confirmed to participate in Live at the BBQ include Common, David Banner, UGK, Mos Def, Bilal, Clipse, Collie Budz, E-40, Cham, and Large Professor.

Viral invitations? What does that even mean?

Looks like it doesn’t matter. All you have to do is register at the Zune Live at the BBQ website. You need to give your name, email, date of birth, and phone number.

If you’re in one of the three lucky cities, have fun!

The New York Times ran an article on Monday about the Xbox Live Marketplace (XBLM), the “virtual market” that launched in November of last year (and which received it’s very own blade in the Spring 2007 update). Though still not available in Canada, I am quite interested in the service. The article includes a general overview and some interesting statistics:

Microsoft declined to give revenue figures for the service, but claims it has grown by double-digit figures each month since it was introduced.

The service currently offers more than 2,000 hours of programming. To prevent piracy, consumers have 24 hours to watch rented material before it is automatically expunged from the console’s hard drive.

I think Microsoft was smart to launch the service when they did. There’s a lot of room for improvement, but gaming consoles are definitely morphing into something more - call them entertainment consoles. Thanks to XBLM, Microsoft has a good lead over competitors.

Speaking of improvements, why not make it possible to synchronize content with the Zune? Currently it’s a one-way relationship: nothing leaves the Xbox 360.

Really though, I’d be happy if they launched XBLM here in Canada!

Are you ready for some very unscientific research? Okay good, here we go! I was poking around Facebook today, as I often do, when I decided it would be a good idea to search for “Zune” just to see what came up. Turns out there are 139 groups on Facebook with “Zune” in the title or description. Are these good or bad groups, I thought?

I went through the entire list, and found 85 groups that were directly related to the Zune. Of these, 16 were negative, 38 were positive, and 31 were neutral. Negative groups include those titled like “ZUNE SUCKS!!!” whereas positive groups include those titled like “ZUNE ROCKS!!!” And neutral groups are basically those that didn’t seem to lean one way or the other. The largest group, with 968 members, is titled “Dude, I got a Zune, where’s yours?”

A search for “ipod” returns over 500 groups, as does a search for “iphone”. It’s clear that Microsoft has some catching up to do. Surely some of those ipod/iphone groups are negative, but like the saying goes, there’s no such thing as negative press!

I guess the Zune team should be encouraged that the positive groups outnumber the negative ones. Lots of room for improvement, however!

We’re less than five days away from one of the biggest musical events in history - Live Earth. Here’s a description of the event, spearheaded by Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore:

Live Earth is a 24-hour, 7-continent concert series taking place on 7/7/07 that will bring together more than 100 music artists and 2 billion people to trigger a global movement to solve the climate crisis.

If you can’t attend one of the concerts in person, don’t worry. In addition to being broadcast on television and satellite radio, the concerts will be streamed online at MSN. About an hour ago a press release was issued that sheds some light on the technology behind the streaming. Incited Media has been contracted to provide the streams:

Incited’s team of roughly 80 technicians will be streaming nine live feeds (eight stages plus a world feed) to liveearth.msn.com. Incited will have 7 EVS systems editing individual songs and 27 servers in a VOD encoding “farm” going at all times as well as 24 live encoders for the Windows Media and QuickTime streams.

I find it hard to believe that MSN would feature QuickTime streams on the site, but you never know. They have a nice Zune logo on the site, as well as some big ads! In any case, you’ll be able to watch Live Earth online using Windows Media.

I’ll be watching!

According the folks at ZuneScene, Microsoft is hard at work on the next generation hard drive Zune code-named “Scorpio” which itself is the big brother of “Draco,” a flash-based device. From a “source inside the hallowed halls of Microsoft”:

The source indicated the storage capacity is 80GB for Scorpio. We challenged that and asked if he was sure there would be no 100 or 120 GB Zune. The answer was blunt: “No, it will be 80″. Perhaps the most exciting news is that mass production of Scorpio will begin at the very end of July.

The timeline for launch is thus the 2007 holidays.

Bottom line - if you’ve been holding out for a revision to the Zune, it sounds like you won’t have to wait much longer!

I think the Zune is a very good first entry into the market for Microsoft, but there’s no way I’d be tattooing the Zune logo on my body, let alone more than once! Yet someone did. You’ve probably heard about “mszunefan” by now - here he is with his two tattoos:

It turns out that getting those tattoos was a good investment! According to Engadget, Microsoft has decided to fly its biggest Zune fan out to Redmond to meet the Zune team! He’ll also do an interview for Microsoft’s Channel 10.

If I were mszunefan I’d be thinking “who’s laughing now?” Heheh…well done sir.

Will the second-generation Zune get a boost in storage space? A bigger hard drive is probably a good bet anyway, but this news from Samsung sort of makes it more likely:

Featuring the highest available capacity in the 1.8” form factor (120GB) and fastest speed (4200rpm) for notebook performance, Samsung’s N2 Series drives usher in a new era of advanced capability and enhanced reliability.

The new drives will fit in a Zune and share the same connection type as current drives, according to Zune-Online.com.

Bring on the larger capacity Zunes!