So we all know there have been some huge changes coming Zune and to be honest it’s been a great big question mark as to what Microsoft would do to shake things up. I’ve been sitting back and watching this with little to say on the matter since Microsoft released those horrible holiday sales stats which show Zune losing over 100 million of their hard earned dollars

I did not say much when they posted stories about huge layoffs at Xbox and Zune and even though it hurt to see him go, I didn’t have much to say about the departure of our longtime friend Cesar from the Zune team. It got to be a drag trying to keep up so I set back and waited for signs of a direction and now it appears we have one.

The Zune team will be split into two divisions based on hardware and software. The software team will focus on putting Zune on every other device on the market while the hardware team will continue to develop and manufacture Microsoft devices. The Zune lives on and maybe we’ll begin to see all the wonderful features we wanted in the beginning with the new and improved Zune family.

We’re hoping for great big things from the software division and the upcoming release of Windows Mobile 6.5 is the first big step. Screenshots from the latest update to the Microsoft mobile operating system show new links to the Microsoft Marketplace. And today we find out that Microsoft will be opening up retail stores a la Apple and actually retailing their products in their own stores for the first time in company history.

Is the new Microsoft really just the old Apple in disguise? Will the juggernaut of technology be able to become the juggernaut of consumer electronics in America? Will a Microsoft store with Windows, Zune and Xbox for sale make it in a recession or should they have considered a staffed boutique inside Best Buy or even Walmart?

Microsoft readies Zune service for non-Zune devices, Marketplace appears in WinMo 6.5 screenshot – Engadget

We’re just days away from Mobile World Congress where Microsoft is expected to make a few notable annoucements. Until then, we have to settle for all the hints and innuendo we can gather as Redmond attempts to win back the hearts, minds, and pocketbooks of consumers infatuated with Android, WebOS, and whatever Apple’s got cookin’. Like these supposed 6.5 screenshots above, this time showing what looks like a Marketplace store a la the Zune.

Discuss this in the Zune Message Boards.

Hip hop star Common has released a new album called Mind control and his new video features a Zune player. Common is also hawking Zune players in a new television commercial that I have actually seen a few times. It catches my ear with the Afrika Bambaataa beats and I have watched a few times now.

I’ve never really listened to his music but I may just grab it with my Zune pass so i can do my own review. This review below will have to do for now.

The Last Word: Common Is Using Mind Control To Get You To Buy A Zune (And His Album)

Our look at the closing lines of reviews of the week’s biggest new music continues with a look at reactions to Common’s Universal Mind Control, which arrives in stores today:

Discuss this in the Zune Message Boards.

You can now access the BET Network programming in the Zune MarketPlace. Enjoy!!

Zune Insider

The list of launch shows include:

American Gangster

Baldwin Hills

BEEF

College Hill

College Hill:  Interns

Comic View

Hell Date

Iron Ring

Keyshia Cole: The Way It Is

S.O.B.

Somebodies

Discuss this in the Zune Message Boards.

PC Mag has done a review of the Zune MarketPlace and although they recognize its not as large as iTunes yet they see how it does allow for discovery of new music in an easier fashiopn than iPod.

Thye remark on how nice the Zune FM stereo is and the of course love the idea of being able to grab songs over any Wi-Fi connection with your Zune Pass. I have been very happy with the new updates to the Zune MarketPlace and I am very happy with my Zune Pass. Anyone buy a song from the radio yet?

Zune Marketplace (October 2008) – Wi-Fi Hi-Fi – Reviews by PC Magazine

One sweet addition is that your Zune can now connect to Zune Marketplace from any public Wi-Fi hot spot, giving you access to some three million tracks on demand. While Apple’s refusal to add a music subscription service to iTunes 8 made some sense, given the low adoption rate of such services to date, Microsoft’s approach takes subscriptions to a level previously occupied only by niche MP3 players like the SanDisk Sansa Connect.

I spent 6 days in the hospital with a broken leg and if it were not for my trusty friend MAX the original Zune player I think I would have lost my mind. I have had this trusty old Zune for almost two years now and never was I so glad to have it with me then the time spent in a hospital in Montego Bay recently.

I was in a car crash and spent the first two days moving about but once I settled into Cornwal Regional in Montego Bay I requested my wife bring me my Zune so I could listen to my music which I gladly did for the first day or so until I realized how bored I was with all the songs I had on it. It’s been two months since I used the Zune and it’s got lots of my old faves on it but no new music. I was in the mood for something fresh and with no net access the built in FM radio was my best choice.

I ended up using the radio a lot over the 3 or 4 days I spent on my back waiting for doctors to tell me what was wrong and what we should do. In the end I got a cast and I’m back home listening to my old Zune again but this time I’m using the Zune Marketplace to download songs from some of the music I heard on the radio. I wish I could tag songs on the radio here like listeners can in select merkets around the States but I can’t. For now I’m forced to figure out who it is I am listening to and then I have to go search for what I want to hear.

The Zune is proving to be a great music discovery device and I am glad to see Microsoft so focused on the music.

Zune is getting a boost of sorts from its union with FM radio stations. New features on the latest Zune update allow users to flag songs heard on their local radio station and later purchase them from the Zune Marketplace using technology Microsoft developed in partnership with radio stations nationwide.

It’s probably not going to be their most popular feature but with positive growth in the radio market it is a way to gain more music sales and if people want to pay for songs they should have the ability to do so with ease.

Radio Gains Audience, Pushes ‘Buy from FM’ Initiative – Media Buyer Planner

The 14-24 demo is increasing its time spent listening to radio and decreasing time spent listening to iPods, according to a new study from Paragon Research.

Time spent listening to radio among 14- to 24-year-olds has increased by 11% this year, while time spent listening to iPods has slipped by 13%, per the study (via AdAge). The article points out that the study corresponds with the RAB’s annual RADAR report, which shows that AM/FM listeners increased by 3 million, to a total of 235 million weekly listeners, in 2008.

Radio’s continued growth can be attributed, in part, to the fact that it is more difficult in the MP3 space to come across new music. “As a result, that isolated programming effect does not allow you the serendipitous experience the way radio does,” says Jeff Haley, pres-CEO of the RAB, speaking about the Paragon study.

Technorati Tags: zune, zune fm, zune radio, zune.com

Here is a review of the Zune 16Gb player from PC World. They seem to agree with most everyone else that the Zune has finally become a serious music player with high features end iPod does not offer.

The additional capacity of the 16GB player should come in handy for those who decide to use the many new features available to the Zune 3.0 firmware. You can now access the Zune MarketPlace from your wireless device and do things like purchase songs you hear on the radio station thanks to the new partnership Zune has with many major radio stations.

The hardware specifications on the Zune 16 are very similar to those of the Zune 8 and what really changed was the harddrive capacity and the high gloss finish of the new Zune 3 players.

PC World – Microsoft Zune 16 GB Review

The 16GB Zune retails for $200–the same price that the 8GB Zune carried when it debuted. Size (including the 1.8-inch screen), weight, and the device’s battery life (according to the company’s spec) remain the same for the $200 Zune 16GB. At 0.3 inch thick, the 16GB Zune is noticeably bulkier than the 0.24-inch third-generation iPod Nano; it also weighs a bit more, at 1.7 ounces versus 1.3 ounces for the Nano.

Zune.net | The Good, The Bad & The Queen – Artist Profile Page

The Good, The Bad & The Queen began life in the Aphrodisia Studios in Lagos, Nigeria, in 2004. Damon Albarn (Blur, Gorillaz) and guitarist Simon Tong (The Verve) had travelled to Lagos to record with veteran drummer and Afrobeat pioneer Tony Allen (Africa 70, Fela Kuti). Working with local musicians, the trio recorded an album’s worth of material. Back in England, Damon was finishing off Gorillaz’ Demon Days album and the project went on the back burner.

By the time they came back to it−and when Damon gave the recordings to producer Brian ‘Danger Mouse’ Burton−feelings about the record had changed. “When Brian came on board it really started to become, The Good, The Bad & The Queen. I started writing about this area−West London−and coming to define here and why I think it’s such a special place to live,” said Albarn.

The final collaborator to come in to the studio was Clash bassist−and West London native−Paul Simonon, and the album was finished by early summer 2006.

The result is a record specific to a place and a time but with a background that is geographically wide-ranging and stretches far back into a glittering musical past. The Good, The Bad & The Queen traces a journey from the English music hall tradition, over to West Africa for Afrobeat, zigzagging through the West Indies and its reggae and dub, back to England and London’s punk scene, all the while taking in a strand of British beat music from the ’50s right through to Britpop.

Preview and download their self-titled album, The Good, The Bad & The Queen, on Zune Marketplace today.

Zune.net | Animal Collective – Artist Profile Page

Friends and musical partners since 1992, core members Avey Tare (a.k.a. David Porter) and Panda Bear (a.k.a. Noah Lennox) came together in 2000 with the intention of moving pop music in a direction that would place heavy emphasis on sonic experience. Soon after this, they began operating as Animal Collective, an umbrella name now used for a grouping of four people.

Avey Tare, Panda Bear, Geologist (a.k.a. Brian Weitz), and Deaken (a.k.a. Conrad Deaken) play together under different names and in different configurations. Their releases are always prone to continual musical change: from beautifully skewed pop ballads to fiercely ruptured noise-squalls to tribal rhythmic work-outs to simple folk songs, to who knows where; from fully orchestrated group freak-outs to the intimacy of an acoustic duo.

In whatever formation, Animal Collective is a genuinely thrilling live unit, passionately committed and unafraid to put themselves on the line.

The Collective’s first offering was a stunning collaboration between Avey Tare and Panda Bear called Spirit They’re Gone, Spirit They’ve Vanished, released on their own label Animal in August of 2000. A second album, Danse Manatee was released by Catsup Plate in July 2001, which was accompanied by a month-long U.S. tour with their friends Black Dice. The next year they released a limited-edition, vinyl-only on St.Ives (a sub-label of Secretly Canadian) called Hollinndagain, which was made up of recordings from live shows.

In 2003, they released Campfire Songs, a collection of songs recorded live on a screened-in porch in rural Maryland on Catsup Plate, Here Comes the Indian on Carpark’s imprint label Paw Tracks, and three tracks from Avey Tare also appeared on a Split 12″ shared with David Grubbs. The next year, the group released their twisted yet masterly pop album, Sung Tongs, and followed it with the album Feels, which was released in October of 2005.

The group’s first release of 2007, People, features three previously unreleased tracks (plus one live version), which were recorded at the same sessions as the band’s hugely successful Feels album.

Preview and download Animal Collective’s songs on Zune Marketplace today.

Zune.net | Rodrigo y Gabriela – Artist Profile Page

Rodrigo (Sanchez) and Gabriela (Quintero) are two fast-fingered, Dublin-based, Mexicans with a unique sound created on acoustic guitars. Their music is difficult to define, straddling both world and rock, and often filled with timeless Hispano−classical influences. The fire in it comes from their life-long passion for metal music.

The duo’s repertoire flies beyond familiar Latin folk guitarists’ styles because of the metal connection: their re-workings of Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” and Metallica’s “Orion,” and the presence, on “Ixtapa,” of the fiery Hungarian gypsy violinist, Roby Lakatos.

The musicians met as teenagers at the Casa de Cultura (Culture House) in Mexico City. Rodrigo was playing drums in a band that changed its name to Tierra Acida (Acid Earth) when Gabriela joined them on guitar. Tierra Acida played in Mexico City’s roughest clubs and lived off day jobs. They recorded an album but wouldn’t sign the record contract, planning instead to concentrate on learning more guitar styles. In fact, they just hung out with friends and survived by playing bossa nova, a style of Brazilian music, in hotel bars before they decided to travel to Europe.

Their first port of call was Dublin, Ireland, in 1999. The city was booming with new music venues, galleries, and a thriving rock scene. The two Mexicans found themselves jamming with local folk musicians in the bars. Next, they moved to Denmark, which inspired two numbers on their album, “Diablo Rojo,” a scary roller-coaster ride in the city, and “Viking Man,” their nickname for a homeless man they befriended, and then to Barcelona before returning to Dublin after they were asked to play the newly opened Sugar Club. Damian Rice, then a busking friend, invited them to support his shows, and in 2003, they released Re-Foc, and a year later, Live Manchester and Dublin, which both launched them onto the World Music circuit.

The duo’s influences range from family salsa records to Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath, Queen, and Led Zeppelin. But, crucially, they grew up during Mexico’s “metal era.”

Mentions of flamenco influences raise sharp responses: “To many music fans, it sounds like flamenco, and we’re great flamenco fans, but we don’t play it,” says Gabriela. “The only similarity is that our music is guitar music and it’s very rhythmic.”

Rodrigo and Gabriela describe their style as “Fusion music.” “It’s mainly got Latin harmonies and rhythms but the structure is rock. It’s not jazz because it’s structured, and we don’t improvise; our solos are exactly what’s on the record, as a metal fan and guitarist you always want to hear the same solo,” the groups says.

Check out the duo’s latest album, Rodrigo y Gabriela, on Zune Marketplace!