Zune.net | Zune speaks to young adults about voting

Zune speaks to young adults about voting

Joint partnership with Declare Yourself and The Youngest Candidate director, Jason Pollock, to visit college campuses and get the word out

REDMOND, WA — October 20, 2008 — Just in time for the presidential election, Zune is encouraging young adults to get out and vote on November 4, 2008 and is partnering with Declare Yourself, the national non-profit campaign to encourage youth to register to vote and get to the polls, and Jason Pollock, director of the new documentary “The Youngest Candidate.”

Declare Yourself has been working diligently the past few months to inspire youth to register to vote and now with only 16 days to go until the election, Zune is teaming up to get those who registered to cast their vote.

Now through the election, Zune is speaking to more than 2 million music fans by featuring an election page, “Declare Yourself! Election ’08,” in the Zune Marketplace online store, and by creating a “Declare Yourself” page in the online music community, Zune Social. Users can visit the “Declare Yourself” page on the Social to get the latest Declare Yourself public service announcements, political podcasts, custom playlists and to preview and download the trailer of “The Youngest Candidate” documentary, Jason Pollock’s film about four teenagers who ran for public office.

In addition, starting today, Zune will be a part of the “Why Wait? Early Voting” tour with both Declare Yourself and Jason Pollock. The tour will travel on the Zune van to 15 college campuses around the United States in an effort to get the youth vote out before and on Election Day. Director Jason Pollock will host a sneak peak screening of his new film, “The Youngest Candidate” at each tour stop and Zune will hand out free 14-day Zune Pass subscriptions, which give fans unlimited access to millions of tracks available on Zune Marketplace, and will conduct a raffle to give a Zune to one of the students who attends the screening. Declare Yourself will be passing out information on early voting on flyers designed by Shepard Fairey. Pollock will also be writing blogs every day about each stop of the tour on his website, http://www.TheYoungestCandidate.com.

Tour stops include:

10/20 – Duke University

10/21 – North Carolina State University

10/22 – University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

10/23 – North Carolina A&T State University

10/24 – University of Florida

10/25 – Univ. of Central FL

10/26 – Ft. Lauderdale Film Festival

10/27 – University of South Florida

10/28 – Florida Atlantic University

10/30 – University of Virginia

10/31 – Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

11/1 – Pennsylvania State University

11/2 – Michigan State University

11/3 – Ohio University

11/4 – Ohio State University

Zune Marketplace also features political podcasts, downloadable Saturday Night Live political skits and more. To access Zune Marketplace, visit: http://www.zune.net/en-US/entertainment/podcasts. To access the Declare Yourself Social, page visit: http://social.zune.net/member/DeclareYourself and to access the election page on Zune Marketplace visit, http://www.zune.net/DeclareYourself.com.

It’s true – we have a pink Zune hitting retail stores starting in May. We’re doing a limited run of 100,000 devices, and they’ll be sold in the same retail channels where Zune is sold. Here’s a new photo that one of the designers just sent over:

 
It’s interesting: it seems like technology design is mirroring fashion. We’re looking at trends in the coming fashion seasons as we develop new colors.

<Edit 2:57 PM> - added the group shot.

Kudos to Harvey from Zunerama – he just announced today that he’s going to be co-authoring Zune for Dummies. Awesome. I personally can’t think of someone better to write it, albeit my experience w/ Zune is that it’s easy enough to use to not warrant a “for Dummies” book, although there is an Etiquette for Dummies, iPod/iTunes for Dummies, Stretching for Dummies, and way more than you would think.

 (Not only is he writing the book – he’s also posing for the cover!  (I keed, I keed))

In all seriousness, please join me in congratulating Harvey on the book deal. See, it pays to be in the social

In unrelated news, I didn’t do a Free Stuff Monday this week, but you can win a Zune Tank Case from this thread at ‘rama. Go check it out!

If you’ve been reading the blog for awhile, you’ll know that I’m hiring some folks to help the team out. Well, we have officially got the first one on-board. Yeah! Soon, he’ll be blogging as well. Did you miss the job description? Want to know what he’s working on? He’ll be focused on getting Zune into the car at first. So, let him know your wish list. Oh yeah… I’m going to have another job posting soon. Keep your eyes peeled.

Lots of commenters - in this site and others - have observed that the Zune team needs to have more advertising. And that the advertising needs to showcase differentiating features like the large screen, customization and wireless. Well, starting next month, we’re launching a second wave of advertising. Read more about the upcoming campaign in this article in The Street.

As always, when the ads are final, I’ll post them here for you to see. Hope everybody had a great weekend!

The 1.3 firmware and client launch today. Cesar has the details at http://zuneinsider.com/archive/2007/03/28/firmware-update-1-3-wednesday.aspx.

Thanks to everyone who has been waiting for this update – your patience is appreciated.

From Cesar:
We’re fixing the skipping problem that some users were experiencing – that
is, content acquired from Zune Marketplace will no longer skip when played

So it’s official. 1.3 is coming out tomorrow. All you doubters (you know who you are) can rest easy that it won’t be weeks or days.

Looks like a few Zune websites I visit regularly have some cool contests going on right now. Here goes:

• 
  
  First up, ‘Max is doing a drawing for a Zune player. If you already have a Zune, tell a friend!


• 
  
  You can also win a Zune player by mentioning Zune in your blogsite, and then leaving a comment on A Yoga Coffee Outlook.


• 
  
  Generation Zune and IWAPZ are teaming up to bring you The Pink Power Challenge: 2.




• 
  
  I had previously linked to the PPC Part 1, which was also cool.


• 
  
  And last but certainly not least, our buddies at Zunecorps want to give away a Speck case.

Did I miss any? Let me know; I’ll edit the post. Who knows, if there are enough of these, I’ll maybe create a weekly post called “Free stuff monday” (or something more clever.)

Happy Friday! Ready for some more free music? I’m happy to help, dear blog reader, I’m happy to help. Here goes:

• First up this week, our friends at 3Hive (what’s up Sean!) post 3 tracks from Walter Kong (Zuneinsider favorite this week).


• Aquarium Drunkard has four MP3s from SXSW favorite Page France.


• Rock out to The Mother Hips over at IRockCleveland.


• For fans of new wave, Fluxblog has “Mirror Man,” by The Human League 


• If you can get over the goofy guy in the video (jk – he’s a buddy of mine), You Can Take the Boy Out of Brooklyn has 3 Def Leppard tracks.


• RockInsider has a track from another SXSW favorite – White Denim


• Stereogum has Blitzen Trapper covering Heart. Real nice.


• You Ain’t No Picasso this week brings us music from Sea Wolf, YASXSWF (yet another SXSW favorite).


• This one is for Nighthawk and the other metal-heads out there: Scissorkick has an MP3 from Pelican, ok, it’s not death metal, but still good, right?




• BTW – nighthawk, Charlie, and all my other readers rocking high school. I’ve said this before, but I seriously hope your homework is done.


• And last but not not-awesome – GorillavsBear has a track from YACHT, plus a bonus remix.

Ok, friends, enjoy the free music for your Zune, and have a great weekend!

For those looking for yet another way to talk back to Zune (in addition to commenting here, emailing me directly, or commenting on another Zune staffer’s site.

Look at the bottom of each page on Zune.net – and click ‘feedback.’ Or, here’s the Direct Feedback link