Zune Marketplace, RIP

V, if you still have your music pass (even the old Zune pass, like I do) it is automatically considered a Groove Music Pass; with it, yes you can download music to your Windows Phone and play it offline. I do this all the time on my HTC One M8 for Windows. You can also purchase DRM free MP3s from your handset, but as long as you have a pass and the song or albums you're looking for are available, you can download them for offline play. Just like the Zune you have to connect on occasion to update the DRM on your phone for the files, but it's about 30 days like Zune I've noticed. It sucks that the Zune marketplace is gone, like most everyone I still use it, especially on long motorcycle trips where I don't want to burn my phone battery down, but there is recourse. Hopefully, enough negative feedback will get Microsoft to change their minds, but I doubt it.

Well, I think it may have now happened to me. The Zune Pass content on my PC won't play. Even though the Zune software is signed into Microsoft, when I try to play any of it, I get an error message: "Can't Play. Need to check usage rights. Please sign into Zune. To see if there's more information about this error, click Web Help.  ERROR CODE C00D1385." And of course, the link is to a page that no longer exists, redirected ultimately to an empty Xbox page. Again, the Zune software is, indeed, signed in. I've noticed a few more glitches in the sign in, but it did ultimately go through. (There's a trick you can do if you have trouble signing in, btw. Pull up your browser, go to a Microsoft Live page where you can sign in with your ID. Do so. That seems to help the Zune software successfully sign in.)

I decided to check to see if the Zune Pass content still on my Zune 120 plays and... so far, so good. I have an Alice in Chains album playing right now. So ... for the moment, Zune Pass content synced to the device before the dismantling of the Marketplace still plays. On my PC, as of tonight, nada.

I would love to be corrected by someone more in the know. But MY GUESS is the following. When the Marketplace was killed off, that removed the Zune software's means of verifying that the user still had a valid Zune Pass. It was, from that moment forward, as if the user wasn't signing in at all when they were using the Zune software, because though the software was indeed signing in, there was no Marketplace infrastructure on the other end. Normally, when you right click on Zune Pass content, and click Properties, you see a field at the bottom saying "DRM: expires X/X/XX", and that date is usually one month after the day you look at it. Well, after the Marketplace was dismantled, we saw that field change to "Unknown" for everything. So if you fail to sign in, the Zune Pass content continues to play, but only up to one month from the last time you logged into the Marketplace, since that was the last benchmarked expiration date.

The only question is whether or how this will effect any Zune Pass content remaining on our Zune devices. My assumption is that Microsoft built something into the DRM of that content to eventually expire on the devices as well. Otherwise, a person could get a Zune Pass, load up their device, end their Zune Pass, and walk around with up to 110 GB of free music. I doubt they would have let that happen.

Now, I could be wrong about at least some of this. For all I know, I could fire up my PC tomorrow, and find that everything works again just like it always did. There was a period of a few days a little over a week ago where my Zune software wouldn't sign in, and then suddenly it was able to once again. But given that the Marketplace was ended about one month ago, this seems timed right for the final end of Zune Pass content. I've managed to liquidate a majority of that content, and that process is still ongoing for me: what do I want to keep permanently, what can I feasibly purchase, what can I live without. So this doesn't hit me as badly as it could have if it all happened in one fell swoop. I've spent a lot of money at eMusic.com. (They're having a "double your credits" sale, FWIW. Their albums are normally $5-$7, but with these booster packs, it's like you're paying half that, so that's a pretty economical way of replacing Zune Pass content legally.) But... as others have said here, this is very depressing. The Zune platform was a great, economical way to get new music, and adapting to a new system that relies on streaming is annoying. Still, the Zune device and software remains, for me, the best way to manage my considerable digital music collection, and certainly I know of no better way to manage podcasts. I'll just have to do it without the benefits of the Zune Marketplace and Zune Pass. So long, Zune Pass, and thanks for all the fish.

Paul,

I wanted you to know, I finally got around to trying your workaround. I created a new dummy profile for my PC, and fired up the Zune software. The Zune software acts like it's the first time it's been activated, and still has both the Marketplace and the Social. (I miss the Social, btw, so that was almost kind of sad to see!) Of course, it gives you a message that you should restart the software to see the "new features." Ha ha, Microsoft. If by "new features" you mean killed off features, well, I suppose in a Pickwickian sense those could be considered "new features." Naturally, I ignored that, to see what I could do with the Marketplace.

Well, as of today, May 28th, this totally works. As a test, I downloaded the new Radiohead and the new Marissa Nadler albums, which weren't even released until after the official end of the Marketplace. Of course, in the library, only the three free tracks in the Public folder were present. Nothing else in my gigantic music collection was there, because of course that's all in a different user's folder. But now I have these albums in the new user's subscription folder. I attached my Zune device as a "guest," (even though I was logged into the Zune software as me), and synced these albums. It worked like normal.

So I signed off, and relogged into Windows under my normal account. I did two things. First, I copied and pasted the new albums from the "new user's" subscription folder into my regular subscription folder. They didn't immediately appear in my Zune's library. But then I synced my Zune again. It took a few minutes, but then, those downloaded albums popped up. I didn't even need to reverse sync those files from my Zune device to the library. But the big thing here is that all my old Zune Pass material... now suddenly plays again. Holy ****!

I THINK what this means is that your Zune Pass content will continue to play as long as you can still do a "touchback" with the Marketplace, and it will generally continue to work for at least 30 days after. As of now, we have two ways to "touchback" with the Marketplace. For Zune Pass content on our PC's, we have to do something like the above procedure: access a version of the Zune software that's never been used before, as in the case of a new Windows account, and sign in. That will "reset the clock" on all Zune Pass content on your device, and also your existing Zune Pass content on your PC after you sync. And if there's anything you'd like to download from the Marketplace, that's the only way to get it. If you're just worried about Zune Pass content on your device, for the moment, accessing the Zune Marketplace through your device, via Wifi, seems to still work, even though there's not much else you can do with the Marketplace through your device. (On my device, the Zune Marketplace still shows "new releases" that came out nearly a year ago.)

The bad news here is that I doubt this workaround will work forever. I'm very, very surprised to see that the Marketplace online architecture is even up at all, much less that you can download very newly released stuff there. And obviously, we can't just keep creating new profiles ad infinitium. This gets annoying and time consuming after a while. BUT... as we're all liquidating our existing Zune Pass content and getting ready for a transition to purely DRM-free mp3's, this procedure will at least buy us all some time.

It's interesting, isn't it?

It would be nice to know exactly what is being changed and where, at the point that the "update" happens. It's obviously only applied to that specific user and not the entire PC. I guess a file is being updated within that user's folder somewhere. It doesn't seem to be in the Zune instalation directory.

If we could figure it out, it may be possible to just delete or replace that file, rather than have to create new accounts each time. I've taken to using the date as the account name, then deleting it from my main account once it's been used.

Rather than visit the marketplace as often as I used to, I now build up a list of tracks then go and grab them all at once.

I was unsure about posting my findings and workaround on here at first, for fear that MS would see it and change something, but I guess they're too busy to read our ramblings. :-)

Going to try this to see if i can get my collection to start playing again. I assume i need groove music pass for it to work?