music2work2

The controversy surrounding Microsofts' Zune player continues. It still seems to be a major topic of discussion at every digital music summit and forum across the country. According to October 5 Digital Music News, Daily Snapshot, the discord has spread to Microsoft's longtime partners, such as Napster.

Being new to the digital music and media scene, I wonder if all this controversy is actually based on interoperability concerns or just competition. Does this happen every time a new product comes on the scene or is the dislike of Microsoft by many and the opinion of their being out of touch with the market a big part of the problem.

Knowing as little as I do about all this, I do understand that if major technical problems will be associated with Zune, the inability of the software design to operate with existing PlayForSure stores and players, that is indeed a concern.

I think it will be interesting to see if the public will purchase the player when it hits the market, just because of the novelty of it or if they will forsee the limitations and prefer to spend their money on more conventional players.