Zune to Pay You Back for Sharing Songs?

What would a day on CrunchGear be like without at least one totally unconfirmed but juicy rumor? Our spies are going into overtime as the deadline for the Zune approaches (that’s November 14, chuckleheads). Though this is something we’ve heard before, we’ve now got a second source that independently mentioned the same idea, which gives us a clue to it having some weight: spiffs for song sharing.

We know that the zinger for the Zune is the social networking/music sharing features. Briefly, it works thusly: if we have a song on my Zune we like, we can send it to your zune via WiFi. You can listen to the song three times for free within a 3 day window, then it will prompt you to pay for it ($1), lest it disables itself. If you do pay for the song we shared with you, then we would get a credit for turning you onto the song. Once we have enough credits, we can cash them in for free songs or other items from the Zune Marketplace. So it suits us to share, share, share. It’s sort of a backwards pyramid marketing scheme.

Now it’s unconfirmed exactly how many credits you’d need, as we have no real details - just the idea behind it - but it’s a novel take on music sharing that really encourages people to leave their WiFi on their Zune powered up, which is going to be the key of the DAP’s success.

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33 Comments so far

 
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Spud (Who am I?)

This is an interesting rumour. Will it save the Zune. No, it’s still going to flounder against the all mighty iPod.

 
Joe

Flounder is what Apple will do when the public has a choice like the Zune. I am switching after having two of our iPods go “dark” on us (18 and 22 months). I refuse to support Apple while they continue to engineer a product with such a short life span.

It was great while it lasted (less than two years). My cost per song from iTunes is about $2.22 each when you factor in having to buy a new iPod every 20+ months.

 
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Harvey (Who am I?)

The use of Microsoft Points allows for an economy where micro-transactions make some sense.
I send you a song, that song gets tagged with my referral-ID (ZuneTag maybe), and later if you buy the song from Marketplace, I get a Microsoft Point or two.
I doubt it’s a first-generation Zune feature… but it just might surface as the concept evolves.
Cool!

Harvey
http://www.zunerama.com

 
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Zune-Online.com (Who am I?)

We at Zune-Online.com have the ultimate Zune accessory in case this rumor is true. Its a very discreet Wifi antenna that can help you get rich sharing your songs with Zune!

You check it here:
[url]http://www.zune-online.com/news/latest/zune-song-sharing-affiliation.html[/url]

 
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zunemaster (Who am I?)

I think this will be a good model IF the ratio is good. Who wants to sell 50 songs for Microsoft and get one free song? Even 20 is pushing it. The details is what is going to make this thing fly or die.

Zunemaster

 
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web2pointUhOh (Who am I?)

Fantastic idea. This is truly brilliant. If this is a rumor, Microsoft should adopt the idea. Not only will kids share their songs, but I bet soon they will be able to sell their original content. Imagine if you have homemade videos clips or your own garage band songs loaded onto your zune. What if you can tag it with a cost per download..then everytime someone listens and decides to download your stuff, you get paid. Huge potential.

 
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taylor (Who am I?)

that would be cool i guess but i probably wouldnt do it very much, and i wonder if you have to buy the song from the market place to get the credit or if you can just get the song from a cd and share it for points

 
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Joshua Boltuch (Who am I?)

That’s an interesting rumor because Amie Street http://www.amiestreet.com already does this. I am a founder of Amie Street, and I am flattered that Microsoft would think that our idea of incentivizing members to share and recommend songs is so smart that they would borrow it. I wish they would have asked :), but I’m flattered none the less.

 
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mod (Who am I?)

get your friends to “zunein” to the music your listening too. hmm

 
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Smack (Who am I?)

This idea came up in 2004. Wonder if it will work this time.

http://www.weedshare.com

 
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