A Million Zunes Sold 424
According to Robbie Bach, Microsoft's president of the Entertainment and Devices Division, Zune has already met the goal of 1.000.000 players sold, set at launch for the end of June. He also confirms that new Zune things will come in this fall, talks (not) about the Zune Phone, the new Watermelon Red Zune, the Zune Marketplace and of course Xbox 360.
They're catching up, then... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:They're catching up, then... (Score:5, Interesting)
Catching on? No.
They *still* haven't bought the domain zune.com, talk about stupid.
Re:Reading between the lines, or what isn't said.. (Score:4, Insightful)
My daughter away in school wanted a Xen Video. We went to a retailer and asked for one. The salesman convienently heard me say Zune. They acted like they didn't know what or where the Zen's were. Either I got a real diwit for a salesman, or they were blinded by the possible spiff for selling a Zune. The store did have Zen's, but were sold out of the video model.
Not catching up al all... (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course this all depends on if you can believe a fanboy site.
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It shows a real lack of dedication on the part of microsoft.
Re:They're catching up, then... (Score:5, Interesting)
A subtle difference. Don't confuse causation with simple correlation.
Microsoft isn't working to make the Zune a good product, it's working to sell a bad product through FUD and intimidation, but in the consumer electronics world, MS isn't doing well at all, having lost many billions every year since 2001. If Microsoft spun its Apple-like hardware/consumer products off into its own company, it would be many times more beleagured than Apple ever was in the mid 80s.
What's really going to be fun to watch is not how the Zune shrivels up next to the iPod, but how Windows Mobile is going to implode as soon as business customers realize that mobile phones don't have to spontaneously crash, spend 2 minutes rebooting, and offer arcane and bizarre interfaces and a generally crappy software experience. That is set to happen as soon as the iPhone hits. Not even AT&T can screw that up. That may make IT people question why they're continuing to use Windows products rather than an open operating systems based on Unix.
This is simply Bill Gates' second pie in the face.
Zune vs. iPhone: Five Phases of Media Coverage [roughlydrafted.com]
iPod vs Zune: Microsoft's Slippery Astroturf [roughlydrafted.com]
Next Gen Sales - Q1 2007 - Zune, Xbox, PS3, Wii, Apple TV [roughlydrafted.com]
but ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Same with the ipods back when they hit 1 mil. (Score:3)
I actually see many Zunes in use in the D.C. area (most of them are used for watching missed episodes of Lost, 24, and Heroes)
Re:Same with the ipods back when they hit 1 mil. (Score:4, Insightful)
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I am willing to bet that Microsoft has around 50 to 60,000 employees and contractors and that a majori
Re:How is this insightful? (Score:5, Informative)
No, he's quite correct.
Plus, I'll heap some more numbers upon you, just out of spite.
Apple is going to sell 9.5 million iPods ending this quarter. 9.5 _million_ iPods in _one quarter_ , while it took _two_ quarters to sell 1 million Zunes.
9.5 million versus 500 thousand/quarter. Please also note that I'm splitting the Zune sales evenly between two quarters, ignoring the initial early-adopter bump. You're not going to see many Zunes, period.
http://www.edn.com/index.asp?layout=article&artic
"According to the firms latest report, global PMP/MP3 player unit shipments will rise to 268.6 million units in 2011, expanding at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13 percent from 128.7 million units in 2005. In 2007, player shipments are expected to rise to 216.9 million units, up 21.8 percent from 178.1 million in 2006, iSuppli said."
So the market is going to grow by nearly 39 million units _this year alone_ and the Zune will be 2 million of that, roughly. That's not enough to be visible.
--
BMO
Re:but ... (Score:5, Insightful)
In the UK, if a million were sold there you'd have a 1/54 chance [or so] of knowing someone who owned a Zune. In Canada, it'd be about 1/32 or so. And given that I don't regularly hang out with 32 peeps [assuming all were sold in Canada though...] it's not surprising me that I haven't seen one.
Tom
Re:but ... (Score:5, Funny)
So, if you have less than a hundred very close friends, you're not likely to have seen one.
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Tom
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Ogg Support (Score:2, Interesting)
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That's a pretty stupid thing to say. It sounds better than MP3 and its legal to play on my operating system of choice, it also works fine on my audio player of choice. All it shows is a limitation of the ipod. All that matters to me is that my collection of music is in the best format for me, I couldn't really give a toss
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1) most iRiver and iAudio players support OGG out of the box, IIRC Archos too.
2) yes open source fanatics use ogg vorbis. It is the principle of the thing. Many of the same open source fanatics can use rockbox as well and can play oggs on their iPods.
3) whats stupid IMHO is the number of people who pay quite a bit for the
Re:but ... (Score:5, Informative)
I've found that Ogg Vorbis offers noticeably better fidelity than mp3 at comparable comression. It's not something that you can easily hear with a portable player and cheap headphones, but on quality gear the difference is obvious.
Ogg is much, much better at preserving the character of high-frequency sounds and overtones (think cymbals and strings), and much more faithfully preserves dynamic range. Again, this won't make much difference on the train with your ipod ear buds, but run it through a decent sound system and the mp3s just sound muddy. And when it comes to Classical music, mp3 is nearly useless. Ogg does a decent enough job of it, but I still keep Classical and many Jazz recordings in FLAC.
From what I understand, the lack of Ogg support on many players stems less from commercial or legal concerns (patent issues vis a vis Fraunhofer notwithstanding) than from technical issues. Ogg needs more juice to decode, which means needing stronger processors, better means of heat dissipation, and a necessary hit on battery performance. Not that it can't be done, but it requires more expensive components and shorter battery lives.
But the lack of Ogg support on the ipod is not a huge deal. I wish it were there, but that doesn't stop me from transcoding from Ogg (or FLAC) to mp3 for the ipod and keeping the Oggs and FLACs on my Myth system.
I do favor open source whenever possible but am no fanatic. I am, however, a musician, and sound quality is as imortant as, or more important to me than portability. Especially when portability is so easy after the fact.
And I think it's pretty stupid of you to not realize that other people may do things diferently than you, and they're not wrong because of it.
As far as the Zune claims go, I don't buy it for a minute, any more than I buy the claim of 40m Vista licenses sold.
I take the el to work in Chicago, and every day I see dozens of people with ipods. I've yet to see a single Zune in the wild, and at retail outlets like Microcenter or Target there always seems to be a crowd of people looking at the ipods on display while the Zune is simply ignored. I don't think I've ever even seen a working Zune on display -- they're always off or broken.
Microsoft's numbers don't mean a thing. The numbers to look at are from retailers: How many Zunes have been sold at Amazon, Best Buy, Circuit City, etc.? It's certainly not as high as Microsoft would have you believe. No matter what color they make it.
Re:but ... (Score:4, Insightful)
I take the el to work in Chicago, and every day I see dozens of people with ipods. I've yet to see a single Zune in the wild, and at retail outlets like Microcenter or Target there always seems to be a crowd of people looking at the ipods on display while the Zune is simply ignored. I don't think I've ever even seen a working Zune on display -- they're always off or broken.
Microsoft's numbers don't mean a thing. The numbers to look at are from retailers: How many Zunes have been sold at Amazon, Best Buy, Circuit City, etc.? It's certainly not as high as Microsoft would have you believe. No matter what color they make it.
So because you haven't seen one of a million Zunes sold in the world you don't buy it? Yes, you have seen iPods, because they have sold over 2 orders of magnitude more. They have sold a total of 100 million iPods (according to Apple), so of course you have seen an assload more of them. I have never seen an iPod video outside of a store, but I am willing to accept that they have sold a whole lot of them.
As far as MS only selling a million Zunes in this time, that is exactly what they expected. They realized they were moving into a new market with a dominant force in it (Apple). They are trying to get their foot in the door, get their product known, and slowly increase sales. It is similar to what they did with the original XBox. They knew they wouldn't go in and take over the market. Instead they go in, take their lumps and slowly build a base and a better product.
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I typically look to the underground OSS crowd to be the purveyors of hip.
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In fact it's even lower if you know couples. In most cases, a couple who is against buying one acts really like an individual. Even if one of them might be tilted towards buying one, they won't.
Tom
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every day i see dozens of various players/pdas/phones in use on the bus, waiting in queues and so forth. i would recognise a zune if i saw one as it has such a large screen. still haven't seen one. ipods, creative, archos (and i thought they were rare) are common. i watch my portable tv on a nokia 770.
they should be more visible as you can watch videos on them so they should be in
Best Buy, Comp USA, Wal-Mart? (Score:5, Insightful)
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"1,000,000 sold to vendors perhaps? Sold to customers might be different but if there are 1 mil Zunes on shelves or in stock out there M$ can claim "million sold.""
Sorry, no. That 1MM units is sell through to customers, not sell in to retailers. Companies almost never refer to sell in numbers, as quantity sold in is liable to be returned.
I've seen the NPD data. Microsoft isn't lying here.
Re:Best Buy, Comp USA, Wal-Mart? (Score:4, Interesting)
Not that it matters anyway. Saying you've sold a million at this point is admitting defeat. Apple sold that many players last week. A million in almost a year is horrible and complete failure.
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"Didn't MS do this when talking about their 10 Million Xbox 360 sales over the Holidays? I know that in Sony press releases, they generally talk about shipping to retailers rather than people buying the unit."
I wouldn't be surprised; that sounds familiar. Either way, Microsoft has sold through (not sold in) about 1MM units. Independent data confirms it.
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Even Steve got an iPod instead, although he won't admit to it.
Re:but ... (Score:5, Informative)
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who bought these? i don't know anyone in the uk who has a zune.. for that matter i don't know anyone who has even SEEN a zune. did ms employees buy these at a knock-down rate?
Nope, they are bundled with every new PC. It worked for Vista.
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Espcially over here in the US.
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Worked apparently.
I was pretty surprised that he bought it. Probably just has a big collection of WMA files.
Re:but ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Well I don't know anyone who owns a John Deer tractor, does that mean all the ones that are sold are being bought by people working for the company?
Sheesh, when will you people learn that your circle of friends and contacts are not at all representative of the population as a whole...
And to be honest if you have never even seen a zune, that must mean you havn't set foot in an electronics store recently (assuming they are distributing them over there in the UK as heavily as they are over here in the colonies), which means you probably wouldn't know too many people that owns one.
Finally! What I've been waiting for! (Score:5, Funny)
Now, at long last, a Watermelon Zune! It's as hip as a watermelon, and twice as easy to use!
Re:Finally! What I've been waiting for! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Finally! What I've been waiting for! (Score:4, Insightful)
Really? (Score:3, Interesting)
Has anyone ever been somewhere and seen more than say three in a five minute span?
Re:Really? (Score:4, Funny)
10% of $product market... (Score:5, Insightful)
(Hey, put down that Troll mod -- part-time Linux-based programmer with an iPod here... Really.)
Re:10% of $product market... (Score:5, Insightful)
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"I like that point but I'm pretty sure Zune doesn't have 10% of the MP3 player market by a long shot."
In April (the latest month for which NPD data was published) they had almost 10%. Total US retail market was $88MM and they sold through $7.2MM. That's 8%. Apple had 81% and the rest was... well, "the rest."
When you add in flash players, Microsoft's share goes down considerably, as Microsoft's share of the flash player market is 0%.
Re:10% of $product market... (Score:5, Informative)
1/100 = 1% not 0.1%
The only way to get down to 0.1% is if the iPod only had a 10% share of the overall MP3 player market. I'm pretty sure the iPod's market share is something like 60 or 70 percent.
soo..
100/.6 = ~166 million total MP3 players
1/166 = zune market share of 0.6%
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Yup (Score:2)
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That would mean iPod only has 10% of the market... I doubt there are a billion mp3 players out there!
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Re:10% of $product market... (Score:5, Insightful)
OTOH, when other companies achieve 10% market share against a convicted but unrepentant monopolist with billions of dollars in his war chest and an army of lawyers, yes, that is big news.
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In the cas
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"Well, for one thing, the Zune doesn't have 10% of the market. That was one million zunes shipped, not sold. For another thing, he's probably artificially limiting the category the Zune is in, like only > 20Gb media players or something."
Microsoft has sold through close to 1MM units. If they haven't yet hit it, they will soon.
You're correct on your 2nd point. The Zune has about 10% of the hard drive player market (8% in April). People in the industry like to break up the market into "hard drive" an
Industry, Markets, M$. (Score:5, Insightful)
People in the industry like to break up the market into "hard drive" and "flash" segments.
And then the people at M$ like to just make up a number that sounds big and an excuse for it that sounds good but is wrong. It's called lying.
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Good job pulling that 10% figure out of your ass. Myself, I try to get sources when I pull off numbers:
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2007/04/09ipod.htm l [apple.com]
If the Zune had taken 10% of the market, it would certainly have been significant. Less than 1%? No-name cheap players have probably done that much,
Re:10% of $product market... (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple doesn't have a market share of 100 million iPods. They've got an _installed base_ of 100 million iPods. During the first three months of '07, Apple sold 10,549,000 [apple.com] iPods - but the Shuffle and the Nano don't count (flash-based). Let's assume (for the sake of argument) that about half the iPods Apple sell are the HD models, and that they'll sell about the same again the April-June period. So you're looking at about 8-10 million HD iPods sold in the period described. Suddenly, a 10% market share for the Zune selling about 1 million in the same period isn't unrealistic.
I think we can assume that the Microsoft guy got the size of the market right - he may be exaggerating sales by including units still in the channels and not with customers, but the size of the market is right.
Still, I don't know who buys these things. But then, I don't think MS sells them in Australia yet, so that's hardly surprising for me.
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Apple doesn't have a market share of 100 million iPods. They've got an _installed base_ of 100 million iPods. During the first three months of '07, Apple sold 10,549,000 [apple.com] iPods - but the Shuffle and the Nano don't count (flash-based).
I'm sorry to jump in your fun numbers game, but...
Do you think the future of iPods (in the generic sense) is in hard drives?
Because the way I see things going, it seems like non-mechanical storage is on the march.
Re:10% of $product market... (Score:4, Informative)
By (fiscal) year, Apple sold this many iPods:
2002 381,000
2003 939,000
2004 4,416,000
2005 22,497,000
2006 39,409,000
2007 31,615,000 (the two fiscal quarters ending in March 07)
So Microsoft's sales of 1,000,000 would be impressive if it had actually sold that many to consumers. The fact is however, that Microsoft reports sales by counting how many units it has pushed off on retailers. Microsoft reported sales of 10 million Xbox 360s last fall, after only selling 6 million to users. It continues to push retailers to take deliveries of units to create the appearance that the 360 has not reached saturation, despite little new growth. Given that it could dump 4 million 360's on retailers last fall, it's actually a pretty dismal failure that Microsoft can't manage to similarly fake sales of 4 million Zunes, even without ever selling one. If it can only mange to announce meeting its stated goal for June, it doesn't even care anymore. This is a very dead product.
Zune vs. iPhone: Five Phases of Media Coverage [roughlydrafted.com]
iPod vs Zune: Microsoft's Slippery Astroturf [roughlydrafted.com]
Next Gen Sales - Q1 2007 - Zune, Xbox, PS3, Wii, Apple TV [roughlydrafted.com]
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While the MP3 market is pretty large, it's nowhere near the market of Operating Systems or Web Browsers.. Many millions of people use the latter products.
There is a big difference between a large dominant player (Microsoft) selling a million, and an upstart (Firefox, Linux) getting market share. Microsoft has existing agreements with a lot of companies, which can be leveraged to get the Zune out there (e.g. We'll give you better pricing on our other products if you carry the Zune).
Nice! (Score:4, Insightful)
* If we like said product/OS, then every tiny gain in market share is major news which is accepted without further questioning of the facts as presented. Comments on article consist of lots of pats on the back and generally positive.
* If we don't like said product/OS, then every tiny gain in market share involves questioning the facts as presented. Insert long diatribes about unfairness of past behavior. You can even make statements that conditionally apply, i.e. "monopolies are bad. Except for the iPod, they earned it!"
The funny part is you have a bunch of posts nitpicking over the 10% mark: "there's no way the Zune has 10%!" Yes, way to miss the entire point of the post.
Awesome (Score:2)
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Riddle me this Slashdot: Why is it that when a product achieves ... ...10% of the MP3 player market, it is less than an also-ran. ...10% of the browser market, it is a signal that the world is changing. ...10% of the OS market, it is news that would rival the second coming of Christ.
It is a simple matter of prior expectations. An open source project built by volunteers taking on a huge established company like Microsoft? Not much expectation of huge wins there. When you are talking about the OS, rather than just the browser, and you're discussing the bread and butter for Microsoft and the hugely entrenched mindshare, well the expectations for an open source project are very low indeed. On the other hand when you're talking about a huge company like Microsoft throwing its weight into a
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I would think that part of the problem is that Microsoft can arrange things so you're punished for using an alternative OS or alternative browser. I remember when Mozilla was young and Firefox wasn't even Firefox yet, and a whole lot of web pages wouldn't render properly in anything but Internet Explorer. 10% of the market would mean that people were using it in spite of this problem, and that web designers would need to support these browsers, and therefore it would be a big win.
You have similar situati
10% of the "hard drive" market (Score:2, Informative)
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No, it was only ever a sign of failure to accountants and accountant types, those who judge "success" by what everyone else is doing. Who gives a crap about market share? On its own merits, the Mac was a success.
Oh yeah [imageshack.us]?
Sorry, but the Xbox 360 is as lousy with the Microsoft aesthetic as was the original Xbox.
Is the Zune a Player? (Score:5, Insightful)
As a fan of Apple, I'm keen to see better players in this space to drive everyone up. It's good to see Microsoft claiming the million players sold, but the Zune as it stands today is a turkey. The innovative wireless sharing has been hobbled by unnecessarily draconian DRM, leaving a weak offering. Maybe Zune 2 will be better, but it's a failure to release a poor first showing, as now we've all got this first impression to overcome.
I'd like to see Microsoft release a really solid Zune. Promises are worth exactly nothing; only products matter.
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Nice (Score:4, Funny)
Sold? or Shipped? (Score:5, Insightful)
I know more people with Archos products (2) than Zunes (1).
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Probably true. but... (Score:4, Interesting)
How many sold to their own employees? (Score:3, Interesting)
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Sold or shipped? (Score:3, Interesting)
1000000? (Score:5, Funny)
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Zune = zzZZzzz (Score:2)
Apples, Oranges and Statistics (Score:2)
I've yet to see one this side of the pond, and the statement doesn't say who Microsoft sold them to and and what price. Given they appear to be able to hit the volume just in time for Microsoft's financial year end, how do you spell "write off"? And isn't market share normally measured by what proportion appear to be in the hands of
In Soviet Microsoftistan (Score:2)
It shows just how little trust Microsoft actually has in its
No no no (Score:2, Funny)
Weakonomics! (Score:2)
Microsoft does this all the time, They say "see Vista already outsold XP in its first month. (I have only seen 1 person with a Vista system and he hates it.) it's widely addopted.. why dont you have it? your falling behind in REAL technology."
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"You can't count giving 850,000 away for free as a "sale"."
They are counting units sold at retail. In case this still isn't clear... they are referring to units which customers buy by paying for them at a store such as Target or Best Buy.
It's interesting to see the theories that people are throwing out there. At any rate, glancing at the April NPD data:
Question (Score:5, Funny)
No Linux (Score:4, Interesting)
How much did they pay for this slashvertisement? (Score:5, Insightful)
Church of Slashdot (Score:3, Insightful)
1) 1 million Zunes sold is a drop in the bucket. A DROP IN THE BUCKET I SAY!
Yeah, and this story wasn't about the Zunes market dominance - it was about a MS official stating they met their internal targets of 1 mllion by the end of June. But good lord, for every anecdotal story you have of not knowing anyone who owns a Zune (statistically likely since they have only sold a million units), there is someone else who does. I personally have one friend who owns one, and he seems to enjoy it.
2) Microsoft obviously fudged the numbers! The Zune is crappy, there is no way!
A lot of you are making jokes about how they massaged this number, or how it's probably a million units shipped to retail, but you have nothing to back this up at all, just like you didn't with the Vista license sales stories. Just baseless conjecture sprouting from the basic Microsoft == Evil truism. If they somehow admit to faking the numbers, then string them up accordingly.
Honestly though - take a scroll through all of the comments in this story, and you will cringe. And this is coming from someone who is a happy 3rd Gen iPod owner, and who isn't interested in the Zune in the slightest.
Don't buy their product if it doesn't have what you want, but all of this foaming at the mouth hatred for everything they do or release seriously hamstrings your credibility.
- Scott
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
MS missed the form factor (Score:4, Interesting)
If the zune was 1/2 the thickness - or thinner than an ipod - I wonder how much better it would have performed in the market. The current size is on par with what I'd expect 7 years ago from a early ipod. That's an engineering challenge much more difficult than making a portable brick that plays movies.
I've watched the form factor issue destroy Palm, now the marketdroids at microsoft have missed this mind boggingly obvious fact - thin and light is sexy.
Re:And I still don't know anyone who owns one.... (Score:5, Funny)
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Another 700,000 are just sitting on the store shelves collecting dust. Actual sales to consumers - 50,000.
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Another 700,000 are just sitting on the store shelves collecting dust. Actual sales to consumers - 50,000.
That's MSFT style accounting for you. 40 million Vista license sold, yet that included the two months before christmas when they started giving away vouchers.
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Hmmm... a player that adds DRM to free music. WONDERfull.
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There is not a single song with DRM in my iTunes library. There is not a single song with DRM on my iPod. My wife got one CD-like music container which I had to import on my four year old PowerMac because the MacBook would just eject it; it was made by Sony and no "CD" sign anywhere on it. This might h
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