I received an invite from a friend of mine and that invite asked that I join their community and I would receive one of these supposedly magnificent little devices.  Now, at the time, they had a bit of buzz around them, but I was skeptical.  I’d had 3 different Apple iPod devices, the 20GB iPod Click Wheel, the 30GB iPod 5th Gen, and finally, an 80GB iPod Classic which was unfortunately stolen from a bar in downtown Toronto.

After sharing information on all of my social networks, presumably to determine my status as an likely influencer to their brand, I was shipped the 8GB Zune with earbuds and a recommendation kit of sorts so that I could pass on the good brand vibes that the Zune would soon provide me with.

First step: Install the Zune software from their site.

First problem. The software was not available for my Mac. I was convinved that it would come at some point. But as a temporary measure, because I wanted to try out this possible iPod killer, I downloaded the software onto my company laptop, something which is strictly forbidden by our IT department. Only to load music. It was then promptly removed.  The software itself was terribly unintuitive but it did get the music onto the Zune after a certain amount of questioning just how to do that.

Now, part of my intuition suggests that I shouldn’t constantly compare the Zune to the fabled iPod, but in reality, the iPod is the giant in this market, and large companies like Microsoft don’t usually compete to be second best.

So what has my usage looked like in the past year? Well, for the first week that I owned the Zune, I listened to the FM radio. I wanted to try out the social component of the Zune, but without someone else I know having a Zune this seemed kind of useless. That’s it.

The Zune has been in a box for the past year. I discovered, or rather remembered that I could listen to all of these radio stations online, or I could stream music from services like Grooveshark.  When is a radio useful anyways? When I’m in my car? Nope, car does that. Certainly not when I’m at my desk. Maybe while I’m commuting? No, I’d rather listen to music on my iPod which was more user friendly from all perspectives.

The only possible use that I can think of for the FM tuner on my Zune: If we’re attacked by Zombies and I need to listen to the radio for updates, then my Zune would come in handy. So, I will keep my Zune in waiting for the Zombie apocalypse. In the meantime, I’m still using the headphones that came with it. But they’re not as good as the Apple ear buds.

Sorry Microsoft, the key to competing with the iPod is to make a better product.

Pretty fantastic concept if you ask me!

The “Quest”, (there’s really no better way to describe it) has a list of some of Canada’s best known artists vying for the honour and glory of writing this album. Indie artists like B.C.’s Oh Susanna and one of my personal favorites, Coeur de Pirate out of Montreal are represented alongside well known artists such as Chantal Kreviazuk, Hawksley Workman and Sloan.  The entire line-up of proposed artists is fantastic and it will be interesting to see who gets to write these 13 songs.

While I haven’t heard too much about the song/artist search, I’ll certainly be following it moving forward.  I can see some really great, classic Canadian music coming from this.  My only criticism of the whole thing is that I didn’t find out about it sooner!