Microsoft's Zune will not be released on June 10 as previously suspected, but will actually go on sale on June 17 in a run of only 500 units, giving Joy Division completists and eBay speculators ample time to prepare.
The 80GB portable players will come preloaded with the upcoming Joy Division documentary Unknown Pleasures and will feature the graph of one hundred pulses from pulsar CP 1919 as repurposed into an album cover for the band's 1979 debut, also called Unknown Pleasures, by Factory Records' in-house artist Peter Saville.
Chris Stephenson, general manager of global marketing for Microsoft's Zune division, said the company's "involvement" (read: product tie-in) was "a wayof saying 'Thank You' to the band for doing what they did" that was "notonly a tribute to them but to an entire musical journey through FactoryRecords and the artists and movements it spawned."
In addition, he said, Microsoft meant the Joy Division Zune as "a tribute to deep respect (huh?) for graphic design that lives on through artists like Peter Saville,
and to independent film-makers that believe in more than justcommercial success" (which has also largely eluded the Zune). "Ultimately it's a tribute to the self-belief andself-expression that inspires true authentic art."
Spin.com was given an early photo of what it termed "the special device," which is scheduled to be available on June 17 on ZuneOriginals. The article called it "amazing" that Engadget roughly predicted how the artwork's rectangular shape would fit onto the Zune's rectangular shape.
