Welcome to the Social

Perhaps the most impressive aspect to the Zune launch in Canada is the social networking. They already plan on having applications that will integrate your Zune into popular sites like Facebook and MySpace, automatically updating the fields for favorite music, based on your actual listening habits. Beyond this, there is also a social section to the Zune software where you can set up a profile page, check out the pages of your friends, and so on. This will be integrated with Xbox Live, allowing you to use your Gamer Tag as your Zune Card.

Zune Social is designed to help you find music you like by seeing what other people are listening to. You can see how many times your friends have been listening to certain artists, which songs they are listening to the most, and what songs are the most popular in the Zune Social sphere as a whole. When you discover a new song, you are able to listen to a 30-second preview too.

The sharing of musical preferences and habits serves as the backbone to this Zune Social structure. That said, individual users can control how much they want to share about their musical tastes. If you want to keep your love for Michael Bolton and Barry Manilow to yourself, that’s a-okay.

Looking to the Future

Microsoft recognizes that iPod is still the “Alpha Male”, so to speak, of the MP3 player pack. In this way, it seems that they would be satisfied with being the best anti-iPod available on the market. In time, this philosophy may change.

When asked about future possibilities, Microsoft said that they were considering:

• Internet Radio capabilities (the WiFi is already there)
• Open sharing of content between the Zune Marketplace and Xbox Live Marketplace
• Greater number of non-DRM MP3 files
• Streaming Internet video capabilities
• Record songs from FM radio, recognizing the song title and artist so that it can purchased later
• More social media: See what your favorite artists like too

At this point, most of these features are still just ideas, so there’s no telling when and if they will be implemented. Whatever the case, I’m glad that Canadian consumers will soon have another legitimate music/video player option beyond what’s being sold by the guys at Cupertino.

We’d like to thank Microsoft Canada for putting together this special preview for us. To see more pictures of the Zune, check out our 2008 Zune Pre-Launch Gallery.

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