You know that guy who got a Zune tattoo, and a reward of 5 free songs and some Zune stickers from Microsoft? Here's his second tattoo. Guess he wants more stickers. Perhaps there's some subliminal programming in those new ads?

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I also notice that guy has shaved his handlebar mustache between now and then. We notice the little things, here at Gizmodo. –Brian Lam
Zune Scene [Thanks Nate, image from Engadget]

Product Page [Verbana, via Oh Gizmo]

Prototype Of Pandora Wifi Device Shown Tonight In San Francisco [TechCrunch]

"The recent U.S. Copyright Office ruling regarding webcasting designated SoundExchange to collect and distribute to all nonmembers as well as its members. The Librarian of Congress issued his decision with rates and terms to govern the compulsory license for webcasters (Internet-only radio) and simulcastors (retransmissions)."

Simply put, according to DailyKos: "If any artist records a song, SoundExchange has the right to collect royalties for its performance on Internet radio. Artists can offer to download their music for free, but they cannot offer their songs to Internet radio for free."

Of course, if an artist wants the money from their royalties, they have to join SoundExchange—naturally, membership takes a small "administrative fee" out of your royalty check.

So let's recap: If you're an artist whose work is played on an internet radio station, even if you're not a member of SoundExchange, they're still going to collect royalties for you. And if you don't join, you won't see a dime—it simply goes straight into their pocket. And this is legally prescribed. Awesome.– Matt Buchanan

Is the RIAA Pulling a Scam on the Music Industry? [DailyKos via Slashdot]
Image via Flickr

Apparently, arguing that the new fees will drive many stations out of business is tired old drivel according to the panel, who said that "most of the parties' arguments in support of a rehearing or reconsideration merely restate arguments that were made or evidence that was presented during the proceeding." No, there's no "manifest injustice" there.

The ruling takes effect May 15, so listen hard to your favorite Internet radio stations, since you may not be able to listen long. – Matt Buchanan

Internet radio dealt severe blow as Copyright Board rejects appeal [Ars Technica]
Image via Flickr

We imagine if anyone has the pull to effect a reversal of the new royalty scheme, it's NPR, since it's partially funded by taxpayers. Then again, funneling tax dollars to RIAA fat cats toward obscene royalty payments probably isn't all that unconscionable to some of the government officials who've been receiving massive lobbying largesse for years on end. Even though we rarely tune in, public radio is a worthy cause, so we're totally with NPR on this. – Matt Buchanan

Update: It should be noted that Sound Exchange split off from the RIAA after being created by it, and now represents indie labels as well as ones under the RIAA banner. We still think the rate hike is a bad idea, though. Thanks, Idolator for the clarification.

NPR may lead fight against Internet radio royalty rate hike [Chicago Tribune via Consumerist]

They've all been 320 kbps MP3, DRM-free and widely distributed. Of course, the RIAA had a conniption, even though it's an official NIN viral promotion, pretty much proving our point. We're up to four tracks out right now, so who knows if more are coming. Nonetheless, it seems like a better way to deal with album leaks than suing the pants off of people and their grandmothers. – Matt Buchanan

Nine Inch Nails [Idolator]
Gizmodo's RIAA boycott [Gizmodo]
Year Zero summary [ETS]

With that in mind, Gizmodo is declaring the month of March Boycott the RIAA month. We want to get the word out to as many people as humanly possible that we can all send a message by refusing to buy any album put out by an RIAA label. Am I saying you should start pirating music? Not at all. You can continue to support the artists you enjoy and respect in a number of ways.

Firstly, I encourage everyone to purchase music from unsigned bands and bands on independent record labels. There are tons of great artists out there, many of which you're probably already a fan of, that have nothing to do with the RIAA. Buy their records at eMusic, an online store that sells independent tunes in beautiful, DRM-free MP3 format.

Secondly, you can still support RIAA-signed bands without buying their music. Go see them live and buy their merchandise; they get a hell of a lot more money from that then they do from album sales. And hey, you could benefit from getting out more, couldn't you?

If you are unsure whether or not an album is put out by an RIAA label, the handy RIAA Radar will clear everything up for you. They have both a search engine and a great bookmarklet, so be sure to get yourself hooked up.

Let me just reiterate that we are not saying you should stop buying music and start pirating everything. We need to send a message with our wallets to the RIAA, and that message will only be stronger if we show support for musicians without your money making its way to the lawyer fund.

So come on, make next month one to remember. Let's stand together and let the RIAA know that yes, we are paying attention and no, we aren't going to put up with their unethical practices any longer. –Adam Frucci

The outside is made out of a rubberized plastic, which goes through an interesting process where they paint the inside a different color than the case—this gives the Zune a two-toned look which both looks and feels great. The corners (meticulously selected down from hundreds of minutely different corners) look like they glow, which is called the "doubleshot effect". This comes from the inside radius being different from the outside radius.

So the big news: The Zune will be upgradeable. How? Let us explain...

Microsoft's put in WiFi on the Zune, which even though it doesn't seem to be a big draw to consumers now. The hardware paves the road for them to do various other "scenarios" with the Zune. In the future, via software update, the Zune should be able to possibly do stuff like share songs over the internet, wirelessly sync with the computer, stream music/video to other devices, and much more. The hardware is there, but it just needs to be activated by software. Microsoft's decided to focus (wisely) on making the Zune simple to use and intuitive for people to pick up. Something that we think they've achieved.

The UI is snappy and has lots of zooming, sliding and various cool effects when you're navigating. Luckily, the eye candy doesn't get in the way of usability. The click-pad isn't too bad to use, but it's not touch sensitive like the iPod wheels. The community menu options like sending files and pictures are all over the place. If you hit the middle button to get the context menu, you'll most likely notice an entry called "send", where you can send what you're currently listening to to nearby Zunes. Overall the UI is pretty well designed, and iPod users shouldn't be lost if they decide to migrate.

The Zune's screen was bright even outside, and had pretty much zero glare. Movies and pictures played back smoothly, and the display transitioned automatically to landscape mode when you start a slideshow/movie. Pictures are auto-cropped to display large on the screen, and will be auto-resized down from the original whenever you send them to your friends over WiFi. The Zune was easy to hold in both landscape and regular modes—no problems at all.

There are also two new concepts: inbox and flagging. The Inbox is an area separate from your library where pictures and songs come in from other Zunes. You play your received songs from here, and once you sync, the songs will be uploaded to the Inbox on your PC. Flagging is similar—whenever you flag a song, the song will show up flagged on your PC after syncing for later reference. What was the 5th song I heard in that big random shuffle I listened to on the train? Oh right, I flagged it. It's useful because you can't go on your Zune Marketplace after you sync your songs and see your "recently played" list like you can on iTunes.

We also spent a good amount of time going over the Zune Marketplace, which is what you're going to be using to buy and sync up music. The Zune is designed only to work with the Marketplace—which confirms that it will not work with Napster, Rhapsody, and other third-party subscription music services. But, ZM itself is really clean, with only enough icons and links to do what you need and no more. You can get the sense that iTunes was the benchmark they compared themselves to.

Another not-published or seldom-talked-about feature is guesting. A friend can take his Zune over to your computer, set up a "guest" relationship with your Zune Marketplace software (as opposed to a regular owner relationship), and you're free to drag songs and pictures from your library onto her device. These songs do not have the 3 play 3 day limit on them. Depending on whether you purchased or you're leasing these songs, you can do this with either 5 or 2 Zunes, respectively. So in essence, if your wife wants to grab a few songs off your library for listening to, she can—there's no "wife" relationship yet, but engineers are probably working on that. As soon as they get wives.

Pricing is going to be the same as Microsoft's Xbox 360 Marketplace points. I saw songs go for 79 points ($1), and it will be $15 for monthly subscriptions where you lease content. Microsoft's not going to be advertising the subscription plan very much. You're still going to have to convert real money into points, something they decided on because "points were so well received" on the 360. My response was: "really? They were well received? Because we heard quite a few complaints about having to switch money before you buy stuff." To which they responded "well, 4 million people bought it, so to each his own." I was thinking, "yeah, because what are they gonna do, NOT buy stuff? They have no choice," but didn't want to be an ass.

A cool feature that iTunes doesn't have is pre-rated, or community rankings. When you buy songs from the store, you'll notice that they already come pre-ranked on a scale of 5 blue stars. When you rank a song, it'll rank it in orange stars. What's the deal? Well, these blue stars are decided based on an algorithm combining other people's rankings, the song's popularity, and editorial rankings. If your library is bigger than the total space on the Zune, the Zune suite will auto-sync your library to your player based on these auto-rankings. Pretty great, because as much fun as it is to rank songs (one of my favorite things to do on iTunes for using them in smart playlists), most people don't have the time to go and rate 3,000 songs. Pre-ratings are great for this. Which is good, because there's no concept of "smart playlists" just yet. Bummer.

Speaking of editorials, Microsoft's partnered with and hired a bunch of knowledgeable music folks who are going to be providing original text content for the marketplace. Whether it's album reviews, song rankings (see above), artist descriptions, and editorials, you'll see some cool text there.

Searching is also pretty snappy, and they've provided a consistent interface on both your own library and on the store, which they called the community. If you're searching your library for an artist you don't have, it'll come back with a link to the marketplace for the correct artist/song. Another neat feature is the way albums/folders are displayed. There's this nice spiral/stack of CDs under each item so you can quickly gauge how many items are under it visually without having a number or something else.

Miscellaneous stuff: no movie store (for now), can't talk about how many major labels they have on, Zune Marketplace will never fully integrate into Windows Media Player for an all-in-one package like iTunes. You can easily stream stuff to the Xbox 360 from the Zune software (there's even a setting in one of the options menus), or hook up your Zune to the 360 via USB. A phone may be one of the things upcoming, but as usual, they can't confirm upcoming projects whether they exist or not.

Overall, this seems pretty promising. I can't find any mis-steps or anything where I have to ask "wait, this is dumb, why did you do this?" in both the player and the software. The Zune itself is very sexy, and feels nice to the touch—not too heavy. We can't wait to do another hands on as the launch date approaches. Oh, and I still can't decide which color is my favorite. – Jason Chen

Idolator is all about music, and how the internets saved indie music from the suits. Yay!

And how the suits bought out the internets with their garbage bags of monies. Noooesss! Anyhow, we find it as confusing as we find girls terrifying. Huh? What's this? Zune posts? Wheee!

Speaking of buying out, Idolator is run by Industry Whores, just like Giz.–Brian Lam

Idolator [Idolator]