Zune Thoughts - Daily News, Views, Rants and Raves

Be sure to register in our forums! Share your opinions, help others, and enter our contests.


Laptop Thoughts

Loading feed...

Windows Phone Thoughts

Loading feed...

Digital Home Thoughts

Loading feed...





All posts tagged "podcasting"


Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Zune Podcast Listener Market Share Exploding!

Posted by Rocco Augusto in "Zune Talk" @ 01:00 PM

http://blog.rawvoice.com/2008/01/19...hare-exploding/

"In the first two weeks of 2008 the number of people consuming my personal podcast with the Zune is WAY up. Over all my show download numbers are up about 15%. This is the largest growth my show has seen in a very long time. What this proves is that when you put Podcast front and center in the Zune Interface like the Zune team has, and make it a integral part of the Zune MarketPlace people are bound to check podcast out. Where Apple has largely failed in iTunes is that they have made podcast hard to find and a buried feature within the iTunes Interface. Today it is nearly impossible to find content that is fresh, the iTunes podcast interface is a wasteland of thousands of podfaded shows and huge numbers of single podcast episodes put up by network marketer’s."


(Sorry about the tiny image, I couldn't find anything bigger!)

Over at RawVoice, there is an incredibly interesting article up about recent podcasting trends and the Zune. In this instance users of the Zune and Zune Marketplace software make up 21.3% of their listeners! This might not seem like a lot, but take iTunes for instance, whose user base makes up only 38.7% of their listeners. Now seeing how the new Zune software and hardware has only been on the streets for a few months now, compared to the many years iTunes has been around, it appears that Apple might have to start taking the "little media player that could" a bit more seriously. Who knows, old Stevie might just take a look at this and declare that all of the Zune Marketplace users have joined good old Robbie Bach in a round a drinks, since you know, being a drunk is the only reason why anyone would want a Zune. Read more...


Thursday, September 20, 2007

Zune Patent App Promises Recommendations Via Wifi

Posted by Adam Krebs in "Zune Content Creation & Management" @ 07:30 PM

http://blogs.zdnet.com/ip-telephony/?p=2388

"A newly posted Microsoft Patent Application appears to describe technology that would provide automatic downloads to a Zune media player if newly tracks from various artists whose work is already stored on Zune or on a user’s PC-based library becomes available....Say you have five Dave Matthews Band tracks already stored on your Zune. Dave puts out some new tracks. A music service could flag a track for promotion, and that track could automatically be pushed down to a Zune- or your PC media library- in much the same way Windows Updates are pushed through to users."

This is really cool. It seems like a logical extension of podcasting, and if it could sync to the device directly, all the better. Granted, I'm typically on top of the releases from my favorite artists, but if it was coupled with an intelligent recommendation system (a la Pandora or Urge's AutoMix), and only pushed ones it really thinks I'll like, this could be amazing. I love discovering new music, Microsoft loves pushing its partners' new songs. It's a win-win.

At the same time, this has the potentially to be really annoying. Let's say I was in the mood for some Dave Matthews one day, and I start downloading his albums like mad. I check my library a few days later to actually listen to the songs, and find I really and truly hate most of them, but the Zune recommendations keep coming.... Ahh!

Plus, if the recommendation system is poorly implemented (which would never happen...right?), I'd be getting hardcore hip hop on my mostly folk-rock Zune or vice-versa. We'll see how this plays out.


Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Microsoft Looking to Hire for Podcasting Management?

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Zune Talk" @ 03:41 PM

http://members.microsoft.com/careers/search/details.aspx?JobID=04C4F264-4A7D-4144-A06C-6D16738F811A&start=1&interval=50&SortCol=DatePosted

I was reading through some of the job postings that I mentioned earlier, and I read a description for a Program Manager position that caught my eye:

"Join us in a multi-year pan-media effort to develop the best metadata repository and ingestion system in the world. Merge disparate legacy pipelines and repositories into a single system that will provide an enormous catalog of content and be the foundation that expands the boundaries of accessible entertainment. We are seeking a talented and highly motivated program manager to help us deliver systems to take in data feeds from a variety of sources, merge their disparate schemas and produce a comprehensive catalog of assets. You will work with many groups at Microsoft as well as outside the company. The ideal candidate will have significant experience with large scale database systems. You will have deep knowledge of SQL, database design, and XML technologies. A passion for Music and Video is also important."

Metadata repository and ingestion system? <puts on marketing secret decoder ring> Translation: that means an online directory with user-submitted content. Take in data feeds from a variety of sources, merge their disparate schemas and produce a comprehensive catalog of assets? Translation: accept XML/RSS feeds in various formats (RSS, Atom, etc.), more than likely containing video and audio content.

Now here's the bad news: if Microsoft has just started hiring for this position recently (January 19th) then it may be quite a wait until there's a comprehensive Podcasting directory like iTunes offers. I sure hope I'm wrong about this!


Thursday, December 28, 2006

Possible Upcoming Zune Desktop Software Features: Podcasts, Synchronized Lyrics?

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Zune Software" @ 02:00 PM

http://zunerama.com/forum/index.php?topic=1457.0



File this under the "maybe kinda' sorta' will happen" category, but according to the discussion threads over on Zunerama and Zunescene, some clever folks have poked at a few Zune DLLs on the desktop and discovered some tantalizing mentions of features that might be released - or they might never make it out of the testing phase. So far the list is looking like:
  • Podcasting Support. No idea what this will look like, or how it will be implemented, but I suspect it's part of a larger move by the Windows Media Player team to support podcasting, and the Zune team is going along for the ride. Although it's also possible that because Microsoft now has their own hardware, they place a higher priority on getting podcast support.
  • Lyrics Synchronization. There's a metadata field for lyrics in each song file, but there's no support for lyrics on the Zune itself. This might link in with a future firmware update on the Zune hardware - though I'm still no aware of any great automated way of pulling in song lyrics to populate the metadata fields. Anyone found a great way to do that?
  • A mini-mode for the Zune desktop software. Think the toolbar mini-mode that Windows Media Player 11 has. Something they should have had at launch, so not terribly exciting but useful if you use the desktop software to listen to music.
  • Video Acceleration. Already part of the software (look on the Performance tab) but perhaps something new related to the MPEG4 playback features.
  • Purple and Yellow Icons. Might be for purple or yellow Zunes in the future, since the Zune software will show you an accurate icon of your Zune.
  • Plug-ins Being Re-Enabled. Windows Media Player 11 has always had plug-ins such as Media Playback Speed, SRS Wow Effect, Cross-fading, and a few others. The Zune software lacks all of them - my speculation is that they gutted them from the Zune software because they didn't have time for proper Q&A testing with their accelerated launch schedule. Looks like they might be coming back.
  • Visualization & Plug-In Support. We might see added visualizations in the Zune desktop software, but moreso, perhaps WMP11-compatible plug-ins will work with the Zune software.
So, all in all, most of this looks like it's re-enabling things from WMP11 that were disabled. Myself, I was hoping to see some mention of DVR-MS transcoding. Nothing yet, though I've heard it's coming...


Reviews & Articles

Loading feed...

News

Loading feed...

Reviews & Articles

Loading feed...

News

Loading feed...

Reviews & Articles

Loading feed...

News

Loading feed...

Reviews & Articles

Loading feed...

News

Loading feed...

Reviews & Articles

Loading feed...

News

Loading feed...

Sponsored links