Is Zune Banking On Multi-Level Music Marketing?

noah | October 24, 2006 6:07 am

One of the supposed selling points of Microsoft’s imminently launching portable media player, the Zune, is its wireless capabilities–Zune users who want to act as “influencers” can send songs to their similarly deviced pals. Today, Gizmodo heard talk of Microsoft upping the sharing-songs ante–essentially giving users Zune Marketplace credits if songs they’ve beamed out are later purchased. Hmm. Well, for one thing, as some Gizmodo commenters pointed out, this idea sounds suspiciously like that scam where Bill Gates pays you if you send enough e-mails to your friends. But it’s also banking heavily on a specious premise. As we noted yesterday, Microsoft hasn’t made distribution deals with any of the major labels yet–and there are less than three weeks to go until launch. Will the possibility of free CSS songs be enough to turn Zune owners into song-pushers? Or will people hold off until they can trade in their salesmanship skills for free Gwen Stefani tracks–if they decide to go over to the brown side at all?

Rumor: Zune To Pay You For Sharing Songs? [Gizmodo] Previously: Idolator’s Coverage Of The Zune