Zune Marketplace disappeared today

If I were starting my collection of offline music tracks, I'd probably look at Apple Music or Spotify. Let's take Spotify. It's premium version allows you to have up to 3333 tracks on each of 3 devices, just shy of 10,000 total. They have to be refreshed every 30 days, but they offer a 320 Kbps rate which I assume applies to offline platforms. Very enticing.

On my Zune 120Gb, I have about 20,000 tracks. True, they are 192 Kbps quality, but that just means more fits. On an iPhone, 3333 "extreme quality" tracks might take up, some estimate, 45-50 Mb, a sizeable portion of a 64 Gb.

My offline collection of tracks is even more sizeable on my computer, perhaps 25,000 - 30,000 tracks. I can divvy them up as I see fit among my three active players (two authorized, one not but loaded with tunes). I can put all various artists collection on my Zune HD 16, for instance, and deep album content on my Zune HD 64. (If I want all Todd Rundgren's Bearsville albums on one player, no problem, with plenty of space for lots of other deep album collections.)

I will check into Spotify; they offer a three-month trial of the premium for 99 cents, $10/month there after. I'm wondering if the services' music libraries are equivalent. One review from February 2016 said Xbox Music (Groove) has 38 million songs, Spotify and Apple 30 million each. One called Deezer was listed at 35 million, and it also features 320 Kbps quality.

Thankfully, I don't have to make the change today. Zune service/players are still working, and I like the interface/size.

I left groove for the same reason.  I'm getting tired of Microsoft quitting on their loyal customers.  If I was loyal to Apple, I'd still be happy now.

Marchingknight, have you tried this and can confirm it permanently fixed a problem that you were overcoming with the temporary US fix that I had described?

I could swear I tried this FeaturesOverride hack and it didn't work, but maybe I didn't do it right. I will try again and report my experience.

Here's more:

http://www.anythingbutipod.com/forum/showthread.php?t=54046

UPDATE: Yeah, that definitely works for me, giving me back the Marketplace and allowing me to download subscription tracks. However, I still haven't found a way to preview tracks that I haven't yet downloaded. I get the error message: Can't Play. The server name might be wrong, the server might be unavailable, or your proxy settings might be incorrect. ERROR CODE C00D1198 (C00D0035)

I've tried quite a few different FeaturesOverride, but nothing seems to help this one. At least the change is permanent, and I can always use Groove to preview since both have the same albums available.

I found a permanent fix!

1. Open the start menu, and in the search bar type "regedit" and press enter.  If Windows asks you to confirm Administrator access, click OK
2. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Zune in the left hand pane
3. Right click on the Zune folder, and select New > Key
4. Create a Key named "FeaturesOverride", with no quotes or spaces
5. Select the newly created folder
6. Right click in the right hand pane, and select New > DWORD (32-bit) value
7. Name the new value "Marketplace"
8. Double click the new DWORD, and set the value to 1
9. Repeat steps 6-8 for Apps, Podcasts, Music, and whatever else you want to enable.  The names of the DWORDs match the names of the values in HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Zune/Features

Now you no longer need to edit the registry every time.  It will override the settings in HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Zune/Features for every option with a value set to 1.

Happy Zuneing, everyone!

Well, just to be clear, authorized Zunes can still sync with Zune Marketplace downloaded songs, for those with a Groove/Microsoft Music subscription, but it requires modifying the registry for the old Zune software that unfortunately gets reset every time I start the software. Here's where you can find the Zune software:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=27163

See previous post for the registry edit to bring back the Marketplace, if you don't mind modifying your registry. I leave Zune software running all the time on the Windows 10 computer (another authorized device) that I use for syncing. It's not perfect (no Marketplace streaming on the computer means I have to use Groove to preview tracks to download), but it works in my case.

I have a Zune 30, Zune 120, Zune HD 16, and Zune HD 64 that have all by turns worked. The Zune 30 is retired now, but I use the other three still, rotating out a unit after 30 days, if required. The portability and selectability make it my favorite platform (20,557 songs on the 120). My biggest complaint is the sound quality (192 Kbps, I think), which is starting to get old.