Zune Thoughts: Zunerama Replicates Jason's Song Sharing Test

"This week, Jason from ZuneThoughts noted some underwhelming wireless sharing results among Zune owners at CES, and from his own spot-checking. Zune's wireless sharing is described by Microsoft with a footnote - indicating that "the Zune to Zune sharing feature may not be available for all audio files on your device". Curious about this, I conducted a test of my own. I pulled down the top 50 songs downloaded from Zune Marketplace, using my Zune Pass subscription. I then created a playlist of those 50 songs, and attempted to wirelessly send the whole playlist to my wife's Zune. When the transfer completed, a message appeared on my player: "Can't send some songs because of rights restrictions. 29 of 50 songs sent to Carrie's Zune"."

Well, even though everyone's acting as though Zunerama thought up the test, at least he gives Jason credit for having performed the initial test. And his results, that 58% of Zune Marketplace songs can't be shared, pretty much jive with Jason's 62% result. So there you have it. Personally I think that if the number were in the 30% failure range, Microsoft's 'mum' strategy might be fine, but when most (over 50%) of the songs can't be shared, it's time to clue us in and let us know which songs are share-able and which aren't.