As more of the media awakens to the fact that the Microsoft Zune MP3 player won't play music from stores that use Microsoft's own PlaysForSure technology, possibly in part to the EFF's pronouncement on the topic (after the details were officially announced – fair enough), now seems as good a time as any to point out that I've been talking about this for awhile.
Microsoft's decision to have Zune function completely outside of the PlaysforSure ecosystem is so surprising that people are still getting used to the idea. The Associated Press is vague on the details; and while I agree with CrunchGear that it would make sense for Microsoft to allow its partners to benefit from the Zune buzz, it simply is not doing so, and that is a fact which I have confirmed with Microsoft.
That said, I did receive a report from one reader of this blog who works at an unnamed digital music company where the lab guys were able to get PlaysforSure files to play on a Zune. However, that involved monkeying around with the files' DRM headers in a way of which mere mortals are not capable.
My conclusion? The Zune store will almost certainly sell protected WMA files that will play on the Zune player, but that protection will be a PlaysforSure variant that's incompatible with PlaysforSure devices. Lame.
