So here I was, last night, doing something different with the music that I was going to sync onto my Zune HD. The idea was I was going to remove the 'heart-rated' playlist from my device and only keep Smart DJ playlists and channels. Every Smart DJ playlist was going to pull 30 songs each from the Marketplace. Channels... well, they were going to do what channels do.


So now I'm making a larger effort to discover new music (based upon some of my favorite artists and genres). My Zune HD, when docked at work and blaring through the speakers will present to me 99% of the time with something I had totally haven't heard or just heard and didn't bother to give a full-on chance. Now I say 99% because for some odd reason even if I say I want 'marketplace content only', I'll still get items that are sitting in my collection. I would think that if I want 30 marketplace songs, they all should have (pending) next to them as they download from the Marketplace.

Plus now, with the Zune 4.5 update and the chance to create Smart DJ playlists like that on my device, I'm allowed greater opportunities to find and discover new stuff. But in the course of this re-arrangement of my device, I came with this epiphany: I really shouldn't be sitting here downloading all of these albums and cluttering up my external drive.

Here's what I mean. Every Tuesday and Wednesday night I enjoy taking an hour before bed and rummaging through the Zune Marketplace, downloading CDs left and right. The problem arises when I go back and realize "Wow, I'm really not listening to much of this stuff." That's not fair to the artists and that's just wear and tear on my external drive. As large as my external drive is (1.5TB) if it's being filled up with music I won't touch, then what's the point of hitting the download button?

Earlier, whenever I discussed Zune Pass, I occasionally brought up what I called the Zune Pass cleanse. This is where I periodically just deleted all of the Zune Pass content from my computer. However, what I would do after that is start just a new batch of 1000 albums or so that I would incessantly download and not listen to.

So that's when I came up with the idea that maybe I shouldn't be downloading any Zune Pass music anymore. Maybe my 1.5TB external drive could be filled only with the music that I download to keep (using the 10 credits, or the free playlists, recorded TV from Windows Media Center or TV/Movies that I purchase/rent from Zune Marketplace). One of the great things Zune did in a recent release was separate music that you get for your Channels and "Marketplace Content Only" part of your Smart DJ playlists. I don't have to worry about this music cluttering up my live collection.

So I've decided to give this a try and see how it works: All Zune Pass music has been removed from my computer. Zune Pass will only be used to stream songs from the Marketplace or to help generate Smart DJ playlists and for Channels. *They* will be my primary sources of new music and now I can spend that hour every night just checking out what's new and streaming it. This might make it easier to use my credits since the stuff I give hearts to and the music that I do add to my collection are more likely the songs I want to keep, so when I go back with my credits I could then have the software sort by "zune pass content" and maybe have 11-15 songs presented.

Yeah, I know. I chatter a bit about Zune Pass, but I see it as such a great value add for my Zune ecosystem that I do like to take periodic looks at my own usage and analyze if I'm truly using Zune Pass to effectively discover new music or am I just (like a glutton) downloading tons of albums simply because I could.

We all use Zune Pass differently, I know. So share with me some of the ways you use Zune Pass. Do you download like a madman (or madwoman)? Do you just stream and only download what you plan to keep? What are your methods for discovering new music?

I want you to take a real good look at yourself and your Zune Pass usage. What do you see?