I get music at the buffet. Where do you get yours?

Let's take it back a few years.  I'm a major audiophile.  Back when I bought CDs I had a LOT of them.  I'm sure other people had more, but I had more than my share.  I'm the guy that bought the biggest case possible and kept it next to me in my car.  When file sharing came into play I took advantage of it and used Kazaa to find a LOT of good, new music I wouldn't have found otherwise.  An audiophile's dream!  I bought lots of blank CDs and got a car stereo that played them in "data mode" so I could fit several hundred songs on a single disc...AWESOME, right?  


But it was illegal - CRAP!  Here I was, a guy who worked IN the music business downloading music in a manner that was robbing artists and writers of royalties they should be earning.  Time for a change.  An aside - As bad as file sharing was, lots of good bands probably gained exposure through it.  I found Thrice and Thursday and many others from file sharing.  So while bands and performers are making less on royalties, they probably stand a better chance of being found now - and most of them are using the internet to their advantage.  Record companies aren't serving much purpose now aside from being an outlet for distribution.  Many bands now are recording and distributing themselves (since stores aren't as necessary) and are selling less units but making far more per unit than they would otherwise.  I guess this is a discussion for another time.  


I eventually went to work for Dell and my first MP3 player was a Dell DJ.  It was clunky and clumsy, but it did everything it needed to do - AND, I was able to use the MusicMatch subscription service from Yahoo with it.  So now I could get virtually all the music I wanted and just had to pay a small monthly fee.  And life was good.  Now, while I had my (very uncool) Dell DJ everyone else was getting iPods and they were EVERYWHERE (and still are).  But I still felt like I had found a better way.  With an iPod you have to either buy songs or albums on iTunes, upload them from a CD you bought or download them illegally.  There is no subscription service.  So while an iPod user pays $10 and gets 10 songs I pay $10 and get hundreds or thousands or however many songs I want.  #winning.  


I was fine with having the uncool device because it satisfied my need to carry all my music with me everywhere.  I eventually moved on to an 80GB Zune and could really carry a ton of music around.  Here's what's golden about it.  With the Zune Pass I pay $15/month for unlimited music...and I can load that music onto THREE Zune players - WHAT!?!?!?!  Crazy good deal.  Both of my kids have Zunes and we all have all the music we want for $15/month.  AND for that $15 I can take 10 songs/month and convert them to be DRM free so I can load them on another kind of device or burn to a CD, etc - WHAT!?!?!?!  Another crazy good part of the deal!  

Now I have a Windows Phone which integrates Zune into its OS, which is super slick and I'll be writing more about it soon.  I still use the Zune Pass and my phone is pretty full of music.  Unfortunately the capacity is only 16GB, so I can hold about 1000 songs along with everything else that's on the phone.  


The Zune app does everything other apps do, which makes me wonder why more people aren't on board.  I have a "Pandora" like feature called Smart DJ, and I can use it on computers and on the phone when I'm out.  I can download a song straight into the phone when I'm out using the Zune Pass.  Also, the new Bing search has a "Shazam" like feature that will listen to a song, identify it, then give me the option to download it with my Zune Pass - goodbye Shazam.  


It's tough being a Zune guy in an iPod world, but I'm happy with it because I feel like I'm getting everything and more that an iPod person can get and paying WAY less for it.  I have the feeling that because Microsoft hasn't done good enough a job promoting and educating about their product, people are siding with other platforms because they don't know about the alternatives.  Same thing with Windows Phone, which I'll touch on later.


So what am I even trying to accomplish here?  Do I want people to convert?  If it would make them enjoy their music experience more - yeah.  


Because Microsoft has done such a bad job promoting they've abandoned the Zune hardware product, which is unfortunate because it really does work well.  Thankfully they've thrown all the focus on Zune into Windows Phone which is beginning to take off world-wide, mostly outside the U.S. right now.  And it's VERY rare that I'll look for something in the Zune marketplace and not be able to find it.  They're doing a good job of keeping catalogs up to date, even with very obscure and new artists on very small record labels.  


I guess I just want people to know there's another alternative to the products and song store that everyone seems to be using.  Bummer it's too late for the hardware part of the product.  Hopefully they can get it right with Windows Phone because it's keeping this audiophile's appetite satisfied.