Last week I made a post about Zune and it apparently was cut off.  I'm not sure what happened, but let's try it again...

For those of you who don't know, Zune is Microsoft's iPod killer media player. 

Now ask any of my friends and they will tell you I have refused to purchase an iPod.  I do this even though I'll admit that it's still the best portable media player out there.  The reason I won't support the iPod is because the only DRM it supports is AAC.  I don't like AAC because I can't play it anywhere except on iTunes and iPods.  That makes me mad.  I want choice.  I also want subscription music. 

When MS started the plays-for-sure campaign (what a dumb name) it made me happy.  Now many manufacturers could produce players and create music purchase/download sites and they would all work together.  I have choice.  I am happy. Now I just have to wait for someone to pony up and create a player as nice as the iPod.  I've owned 3 different creative players but they still aren't as good as the iPod. 

So first comes the XBox 360. One of the cool new features with the XBox is that it can stream music off of your mp3 player and that it supports “Plays For Sure”.  Of course that's only if it's not subscription content. That basically renders this feature useless to me.

Then comes Zune.  From all reports Zune is not going to be a part of the “Plays For Sure“ campaign.  So basically “Plays For Sure“ was Microsoft's attempt at getting everyone else to follow a standard which they could then break for their own product.  I wonder how pissed off the audio player manufacturers are right now.  I currently have no idea if Zune will work with my Napster subscription music.  Is Zune going to work with all the current music sites, or is it only going to work with Urge? I've been thinking about getting a new Dual stereo with the PlaysForSure USB adapter for my car... is Zune going to work with that? 

So here comes the iPod killer and it's not compatible with my stuff.  That's lame when the creator of Zune also created the standards. Seems like a pretty shady practice.