Youth-focused designer on how to save Zune

Here's an interesting post on how to save the Zune over at digital lifestyle blog Last 100. The blogger is Michael Pinto, creative director of Very Memorable Design, a design company that specializes in youth marketing.

To summarize: Microsoft needs a super-cheap Zune--maybe $25--to compete against the $50 iPod Shuffle, and should create limited-edition Zunes associated with fashionable brands, artists, comic books, and sports heroes. He also suggests preloaded content, including selling cheap Zunes loaded with concert recordings immediately after the show ends, as some artists are already doing with flash drives.

Customizable Zune Originals (shown here) are a good idea, but limited-edition Zunes emblazoned with popular brands would be even better, according to one commenter.

(Credit: Microsoft)

Memo to Microsoft: offer this guy a job if you haven't already.

That said, I disagree that Microsoft needs to focus more on the form factor and the fashion instead of the technology. It needs to work on both simultaneously.

I was a fan of the company's original goal of reaching out to hard-core music lovers, similar to how the first Xbox tried to appeal to hard-core gamers with a built-in hard drive and Ethernet port, two features that the PS2 lacked at that time.

But I think that focus got blurry last year when Microsoft tried to move down-market with the flash-based 4GB and 8GB Zunes, which were neither cheap enough to capture the casual youth consumer that Pinto's talking about nor sophisticated enough to take market share away from the high-end iPods.

So yes, cheaper Zunes would be great. But I still think there's room at the high end of the MP3 player market for Music Freak Zune, with features such as a gigantic hard drive (160GB to match the biggest iPod Classic), more EQ choices and volume balancing, support for more codecs (Apple Lossless, Vorbis, and FLAC, for instance), a line-in or built-in microphone for capturing live shows, and an analog recorder in the software for ripping tunes from vinyl, DVDs, and other sources.

They could even build out a competitor to GarageBand and offer it as an add-on to the Zune software--imagine users putting their own tunes onto a Zune then exchanging them wirelessly with other users or posting them on the Zune Social site. Hard-core.

Then sell the high-end device below cost--maybe $300, which is $50 less than the 160GB iPod Classic--and continue to deepen the catalog of music on the Zune Marketplace (3.5 million songs so far, with two-thirds of those now available in DRM-free MP3 format), and I think they'd start to build some serious market share.

[CitizenX]

Moof!

[kadsanat]

:)

[savvydude]

Too little, too late, ain't gonna happen. Zune is worse than Betamax and HDDVD put together.

[Dalkorian]

Why do you need to "save" the "iPod killer"? I thought communities allowed "killers" to suffer their own fate. Let it rest in pieces.

[dascha1]

Um... I like Ironman and Mickey Mouse myself. Can I get that put on it?

[georgiarat]

Suggestion for Microsoft to use their old tactics. Create a less than equal product to the competition. Sell it below cost (subsidized from their near monopoly in operating systems and Office) and then when they own the market leave the product to languish, collecting revenue from a now profitable device newly priced, and move on to the next territory to be captured.

Sage advice. NOT!

[Galaxy5]

What's to save? The Zune, with 2 million units sold to date is just another Microsoft-subsidized failure. They jump into markets and pump failing products up with their massive Windows/Office bankroll until the product either fails pitifully or something shiny distracts them. In rare cases, Microsoft succeeds with the help of the incompetence of their competitors and lucky timing (Windows 3.1, XBox/2), but frankly I don't see how the Zune becomes anything but a bitter disappointment for the people who bought music on the Zune marketplace.

[Remo_Williams]

The Zune is in peril so long as it prevents buyers from being able to use the drive as generic removable storage. My iPod Classic looks just like any old USB drive, making it more useful than any Zune in any color or design.

[the Otter]

?Zune? still ? Hebrew for ?f***,? and let?s face it: Microsoft just can?t stop zuning themselves.

[Dalkorian]

Zune owners (both of them:)) are just sick little monkeys who like to "squirt" on other monkeys while they're getting "squirted" on themselves. (Sorry, just couldn't help myself, the last thing a zune owner needs it to be reminded how pathetic they are because their self esteem is already low enough to be a zune owner! Yes pathetic little M$ worshipping zune monkeys, the rest of the world IS laughing AT you!)

[SteamChip]

If Microsoft make the changes to ZUNE as Michael suggests, maybe 10 more people will buy it.

[pinecone69]

I bought the first Zune when it came out. I really liked it. It had a bigger clearer screen than the iPod.

But the clunky software it come with prevented me from erasing data and really made it hard to move from photos to videos and music. It was unintuitive and just was not worth it. It is the same reason I ditched the Creative and Sony products early on.

i don't care how many others have a product I decide to buy. If it does not work well, I ditch it. And everything does not work well compared to an iPod of every generation. I'm willing to try any product once. There is simply no reason to use anything else besides an iPod for music (for me)