Tenacious D(RM)

Part Three of my recently published Zune review pointed out the shortcomings of current PlaysForSure-based subscription music services. My hands-on experiences of the past two days exemplify these shortfalls. Two days ago, after dumping a bunch of new tunes from Yahoo Music Unlimited onto my iRiver H10 via Windows Media Player, I took the dogs for their early-evening walks. Chris Thile's latest masterpiece played fine but, when I subsequently tried to listen to Tenacious D's sophomore (and admittedly sophomoric) album, the H10 locked up.

I yanked the battery, power-cycling the unit, and tried again. This time, after an interminable delay, the H10 began playing….track 10 in the sequence. Swearing under my breath, I re-loaded the album, and then it mysteriously played through from the beginning as I'd originally intended and requested. Once it finished, I launched Tenacious D's premiere album, and it also began playing in the correct sequence. Cool….

….or so I thought. Yesterday evening I returned to the H10, again with dog leashes in hand. This time, the H10 absolutely refused to play Tenacious D track 1 (which it was playing with no complaint only 24 hours earlier), no matter how many times I reset it. However, when I manually selected track 2, it began to play, and subsequently revisiting track 1 was also successful.

Sarcastic readers might suggest that perhaps my H10 just balks at playing bad music….while I'll agree that Tenacious D isn't quite up to Zoso standards, and that 'vulgar' is an apt adjective for many of the group's lyrics, thanks to "the D's" comedic (and Spinal Tap-reminiscent) parodying, I don't think I'll ever be able to listen to Judas Priest with a straight face again.

But seriously, folks….this is ridiculous. I've got over 20 years' worth of engineering experience under my belt, and even I can't keep my subscription music ecosystem smoothly running for more than a week or so without a hiccup. My wife would have thrown up her hands and given up on Yahoo Music Unlimited months ago, if she didn't have an in-house IT department (i.e. me). Most consumers don't have the technical expertise to figure out what's wrong with their subscription music service, and how to fix or circumvent it. Nor should such expertise be a requirement.

What's the Achilles Heel in my situation? Is it iRiver (and for my wife, Creative), who supplies the hardware? Is it Yahoo, who runs the music service? MusicNet, who supplies the tunes? Microsoft, who supplies the audio codec and DRM scheme? Or likely, some complex interplay of multiple variables? Is it any wonder, therefore, that Microsoft's turning its back on the complex, unpredictable PlaysForSure ecosystem in favour of a vertically-aligned Zune infrastructure?

One more subscription music rant, if I may. Unless I renew my licenses to the downloaded music tracks stored on my computer hard drive every 15 days max, a process that requires a live Internet connection, the tracks stop playing on my PC (until I renew them again, of course). And unless I, after renewing them, subsequently instigate a manual sync from my PC to my H10, the tracks quit playing on my portable device. This is a royal pain in the bum, especially when I'm on long trips where I don't necessarily want to drag my laptop along and where, even if I have a PC with me, robust 'Net access isn't guaranteed.

I realize why periodic re-licensing of subscription music is necessary, of course; it is a subscription service, after all. So here's my suggestion to Microsoft. If Zune could one day execute the re-licensing protocol all by itself over Wi-Fi, with no intermediary PC required…. well then, on that day you can consider me Zuned.