Zune Social: There is a groundswell amongst Zune users in regards to music being abruptly gone from the Zune Marketplace. I'm reading tales of people who started a song in the morning only to come back later, restart the song and find out that it had been removed from the Zune Marketplace. I can sympathize because one of my favorite artists, BT, who used to have 90% of his albums available in the Zune Marketplace (under Zune Pass no less) is now relegated to having all of his albums crossed out and you're only able to hear him thanks to contributions he made on various soundtracks and compilation albums.
Initially, I thought this was a few albums here and there, but it's turning out to be much more than that. Places like CNET have caught on to it and are posting their own thoughts about the situation.
Over at the Zune forums, there's a lengthy thread going where Zune users are highlighting what albums they are noticing are no longer in the Zune marketplace. Incidentally, if you notice albums that are no longer available, feel free to add to the list. I've become increasingly fond of the Zune Pass subscription, and Zune Marketplace in general for the clean and easy access to music, but if artists are dropping left and right that doesn't bode well for anyone.
Many users are being directed to the FAQ that launched when the 4.2 update was released. It seems that the problem became more prevalent with the launch of this update. Specifically with the 4.2 update FAQ, users are directed to this part of the Q&A:
I previously saw music that I was able to preview, stream, or download. Why can't I find that music now?
While we have an extensive library on offer with this release, there may still be some content that is not yet available. If the content you are expecting to see is not found in the Zune marketplace library, please check back regularly as we will be refreshing content often.For me, that's fine if you're talking about music that wasn't available in the Marketplace to begin with. However, we are now seeing it done with tons of music that was there in the Marketplace prior to the 4.2 update. Music that had been available for the longest time. Music that was even available under Zune Pass.
When you're going up against a juggernaut like iTunes, iPod and the like you can't afford to let events like this linger. I understand that there have to be contracts in place, agreements with labels before music is added to the Marketplace, but given the list of music that I saw in the forums thread this isn't like 1 or 2 labels that just backed out or let a contract lapse. It becomes even more stinging when users are making the comment that they don't see Amazon or iTunes having the same issues that the Zune Marketplace is currently experiencing.
So what can you do as a user? My best advice if you don't find your desired content in the Marketplace is to hit up places like Amazon and pick it up. Since the music is in MP3 format, the Zune Software will have no problem detecting that media and syncing it to your device(s). Additionally, even if the album is crossed out in the Zune Marketplace, you should still be able to map your MP3s to the appropriate albums and have them count for things like Zune Social.
I hope, for Zune's sake, that they are working round the clock on this. I would figure that they are given that music is the backbone of this service. Zune Pass is something they tote left and right and the Zune Marketplace is, in my opinion, a well-designed music browsing experience.
Let's see what happens, shall we?
[image credit: http://e-nidhi.com/wordpress/?cat=3]
Post a Comment