[midnightclubbed]

The Zune hardware was slick, particularly the solid state players. The music store worked great and their music licensing was so much better than Apple - $10 a month for unlimited streaming, unlimited downloads (rentals) to Zune devices and 10 free mo3 downloads to own.

Their only misstep was making one of their colorways poop brown! That and being too late to market with a phone that used the same design language

[SllX]

There was also the fact that Microsoft introduced it 3 months before Apple announced the product that would kill the iPod, leading with the HDD model (a direct competitor to what would become known as the iPod Classic line) when Apple’s real flagship was the iPod nano.

There was also the crap that was Windows Media Player 11 which I tried to like for about a month.

There was also the incompatibility with Microsoft’s own DRM ecosystem in PlaysForSure which was full of these subscription music services, some of which were quite popular with the kind of people that were inclined to buy a Zune: folks in Microsoft’s ecosystem that had passed up on using an iPod and used something from SanDisk, Creative, Toshiba or iRiver instead. This is because they wanted to replicate the entire iPod+iTunes model entirely.

The 2006 lineup of iPods was also particularly strong, and included the first aluminum iPod nano’s. When Microsoft announced and released the Zune, they were counter-programming against that, right into the Holiday season with a new brand that had no name ID, with a product that was just like the iPod, couldn’t play any of your music from iTunes or Rhapsody, but with… HD radio.

More than a few missteps were made.

[andrekandre]

  > Their only misstep was making one of their colorways poop brown

i think the other big issue was calling it a 'zune' but thats just me...

[DANmode]

“…you’re absurd, what’s a Zune?!”

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Jkrn6ecxthM

[nightski]

Name or color had nothing to do with it imho (I like the brown personally). It was all timing. They were entering a market with a well estaablished leader (iPod) that was nearly as good, as good, or better depending on who you ask. On top of it phones themselves were taking over the music player market at the same time, which is where Microsoft really dropped the ball.

I mean, iPhone is a really ridiculous name as well if you stop to think about it.

[RajT88]

You think having a dumb name would be a negative, but one of the biggest bands in the world is called Metallica.