Zune Sales Not So Bad After All

pyrbrand writes "Despite the iFanboy jabber that Zune sales were horrific, CNN has a story to the contrary. Turns out Zune was the #2 Digital Audio player in its first week of sales. Not a bad start for the challenger to the iPod throne. As others have pointed out the Amazon sales rank may have been thrown off by Zune sales being divided between the three colors."

I thought I would point out

[Fahrvergnuugen]

That a RECORD PLAYER [amazon.com] is over a dozen places higher in the list than the top selling Zune.

Zune not advertised as MS product?

[WMD_88]

I've seen a lot of Zune ads. None of them mention Microsoft at all. Anywhere. I wonder if this is MS admitting that they have no mindshare. Or maybe the "cool" factor doesn't go with their corporate logo.

It's a difference maker alright -WiFi Audio Sizzle

[SuperKendall]

...but not the way you were thinking. In fact what the WiFi gets you besides the ability to music in a very limited manner, is the "WiFi Sizzle" [cnet.com] - a delightful crackle overlaid on your music while WiFi is enabled.

Re:Amazon sales figures DID match

[laffer1]

Microsoft often has trouble selling the first or second generation of a product. Look how long it took to get Windows on desktops or to get Windows Mobile going? xbox 1.0 was the sega dreamcast as it ran windows ce. The xbox 360 is now somewhat popular. I like the iPod, but I think Microsoft will eventually gain marketshare. Wait until revision two or three and see where the zune sells. I suspect sandisk will put a dent in apple's sales over the next year as I hear about them increasingly. The zune will then take over for the sandisk.

I can't wait to see what apple does with the iPod to compete with the newer players. Apple is the Microsoft of MP3 players right now... number one and an ever increasing base of people who hate the iPod. Apple could also be repeating the mistake in the 80s. If so, by 2015 (windows 95) Microsoft will have the best selling digital media player (it won't be mp3.. not enough drm).

Damn! You had to remind me.

[fuego451]

In the early 90's I decided to join the tech audio revolution and I got rid of an eclectic lp collection that spanned more than a thirty year period. Stan Getz, Herbie Mann, Cannonball Adderley, Leonard Kwan, Carlos Montoya, Bo Diddley, Jimmy Reed and on and on.

No cd ever sounded as good to me as an lp and it makes me sick that I was so stupid as to part with them. I'll bet the guy that bought them is still pretty happy with his purchase though.

Re:I don't know why people want it to fail so badl

[Brandee07]

I agree completely. It's kind of weird to thing of one company so completely dominating a market to be a good thing, but Apple hasn't abused us consumers the way we have come to expect of monopolies (or near-monopoly, in this case.)

Despite the lack of real competition, Apple has come out with new, improved models every year or so, expanded their product line to include cheaper models, and appeased the RIAA with a DRM on purchased songs that is not nearly as offensive as it could have been. All of the songs that I ripped from CDs, cassettes, and even vinyl, are in MP3 and DRM-free, and thus work on my iPod without any issues at all. The Zune, on the other hand, imposes a DRM on any file that gets loaded onto it. It could be an MP3 voice recording of a lecture that I gave, and thus solely MY intellectual property, and the Zune would still put an oppressive DRM on it for me.

On the other hand, the DRM on the songs that I downloaded from the iTunes store has never given me any issues. I didn't even realize they were DRMed until the guy at the Apple Store had me me deauthorize my computer before they would send it to the repair depot to replace the logic board. There's nothing more the RIAA would like more than an overly protective DRM force a consumer to buy a song twice... more money for them. But the Apple guys went out of their way to make sure that I had my music backed up elsewhere and my computer deauthorized so that I wouldn't have to pay for the songs a second time.

Re:I thought I would point out

[14CharUsername]

Doesn't it depend on the sound engineer doesn't it? If you're talking about a sound engineer in the 60's or 70's they were intending the music to be heard on vinyl, and would compensate for that. So it was intended to be heard on vinyl. A sound engineer today would be intending stuff to be heard on CDs, so the vinyl version wouldn't be how it was intended to be heard. Now some albums from the 60's and 70's have been remastered, in which case (depending on the skills of the people doing the remastering) the CD version would probably sound better.

But you can't argue that music recorded and mastered before the advent of CDs weren't intended to be heard on vinyl. Do you think the sound engineers at the time mastered it so it would sound good on CDs before CDs were invented?

Note that I don't own any vinyl myself... But I do know that the beatles albumms were intended to be heard on vinyl. But the convenience of mp3s can't be beat.