Indie Retail Reacts To Zune: “What A Joke.”
"This is the site for the new Zune portable player from MICROSOFT. Amazing that they would steal the look of an indie record store and talk about fingertips and show vinyl in their imaging. What a joke. They have a closed system that shuts out all other retailers from the game yet they have to use images of us to make it remotely cool to anyone interested."
"The digital music world is especially problematic for us right now. There is still no clear path for us to participate in that side of the business."
"First of all, there is no way to really make any money. Second of all, the sound quality is for shit, especially with the basic Apple format. As we happily peddle our far superior physical wares, we hear rumblings from labels that they think digital will be 50% or more of the business in just a few years."
"I think that we will find ourselves in the digital music business when the correct solution rears its head. In the mean time, tons of folks, young and old are buying up vinyl and CDs from our outlets. I do think it is very telling when the world’s largest software dealer has to pretend to be an indie store with vinyl just to get people interested. Speaks volumes to me." – Don VanCleave, Coalition of Independent Music Stores
the zuneians also included a pair of 12-inch singles in their launch-party favors. apparently they’re also banking on that hot ‘usb turntable owner’ market.
This might be slightly unreleated but here’s an interesting article comparing the zune and iPod audio quality using frequency analysis. Pretty objective and technical.
Zune vs iPod – Frequency Respose Analysis
http://microsoftisawesome.blogspot.com/2006/11/zune-is-in-tune-frequency-response.html
I’d like to know what kind of ridiculous sound system people are playing their files on that they can actually ‘hear’ a decrease in sound quality. Plus, the AAC format was developed by several companies including Sony and Dolby, and is not proprietary to Apple as many people believe.