Zune Social: So last night, zune.net underwent some changes to make your discovery of music easier and they've added some features that get you more involved with the artists that you enjoy. Here's an inside (the circle) look at what those new features entails:
New Link: You'll notice that instead of zune.net it now goes to social.zune.net. The front page makes a better mention of the fact that there is a social aspect plus they've included a flash graphic that rotates between some of the key things that are going on with Zune. Personally, I would've enjoyed if they had used one of those spots to focus on Social (and the fact that they've added new stuff), but at least now it gives them a chance to really showcase more than one key thing that's going on up at their Redmond offices.
Follow An Artist: This new feature allows you to get information about your favorite artists and bands directly to your email account. All you have to do is simply click on follow and you'll be able to get email notifications about what's going on with them. Now I don't know if this includes new releases or what exactly it entails, but I know that there were people in the zune.net forums who wanted to have this type of thing available. My one issue though is that when you place on your social profile a view of the artists you're following it just points out even more how having all of the artists have at least one photo would be ideal. When you sign up for an artist to be followed, make sure you to go to the 'social notification settings' under 'my account' so that you can designate when you want your updates to happen (daily, weekly, immediately, etc).
Updated Artist's Page: Now when you go to an artist's page you'll be able to click on a see more than one image for that artist. In addition, you can submit an rss feed related to that artists and have that part of their artist page. For example, I submitted the RSS feed of DJ Colette's twitter onto her page. Additionally, you can check out the artist tour schedule to see when they're coming to your town. On your profile page you'll also have a listing there of artists coming to your exact city. Remember, that whatever you submit is not automatically entered -- it has to go through a submission process. No one wants to see crap on an artist page, right?
Updated "My Social" Page: The updated my social page gives you an overview of things that you've chosen to follow and work with. You'll see some highlights of the feeds of the artists you follow as well as a chance to see, at a glance, which concerts are coming to your area. This is in addition to the stuff that's already there: Windows Live Contacts, Friend's Plays, etc.
Various Performance Improvements: Some people are seeing a bit of an improvement and some are seeing no improvement at all. Yet, Zune has stated that they've done some things in the backend to make the movement through zune.net (and Zune Social) easier for users. Granted it's not a monumental improvement, but it's steps in the right direction.
What do you guys think of these incremental updates?
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