Zune Marketplace, RIP

Officially, we all heard that the Zune Marketplace, and the grandfathered Zune Pass, was going to be shut down many months ago. Of course, those of us who were fans of the service weren't happy. Well, whether out of incompetence or benevolence (I'm hoping it was the latter), at least on my end, both of these lasted significantly longer. I was still getting my free 10 mp3's as late as January. Sadly, I was only able to redeem 7 of those 10 credits before it mysteriously stopped working, but it was in time to the get the last David Bowie album, so I'm not complaining. Still, the Zune Marketplace, reduced to merely its function of providing DRM-protected content you could sync with your Zune, still worked. And worked. And worked. I was beginning to think that perhaps the better angels of Microsoft's conscience prevailed, and those of us with Zune Pass, err, Xbox, err, Groove Passes would still be able to download unlimited content for our PC's and Zune devices. Tonight, April 27, 2016, that officially ended.

My Zune software had what I thought was a glitch. It shut down, and I was offered the choice of getting it debugged. But when I restarted the software, I noticed two changes. First, when you right click artists or albums, you no longer have the option of being taken to where that content is on the Zune Marketplace. Instead, it says (for example), "More about the Flaming Lips ONLINE." Clicking those links just brings you to the Groove homepage, and an offer to sign up. It doesn't matter what artist or album: every time, the link is to the Groove homepage, even if you're signed in, nothing specific to those artists.

And the worst of all: just like the Zune Social, the Zune Marketplace text at the top of the software is gone. Your options are now limited to Quickplay, Collection, and Device. Now, I still have a lot of stuff I've downloaded from the Marketplace on my PC and in my Zune device. I don't know what will happen with that. It still plays for now, I'm noticing. Though as a test, I tried to see if one track that hadn't been synced would still do so. No... A message about needing to check usage rights, and to sign on with a Zune Music Pass. When you right click on Zune Pass content, the DRM now says... "Unknown," when it used to offer more specifics about being usable for at least another month. We'll see what happens with what's still on the device. At the very least, as of now, all Zune Marketplace DRM-protected downloads still play in the software.

So... I'm disappointed to see the Zune Marketplace go. I have nothing against Groove... I've played around with it, both on my PC and my phone, but I don't think it's quite for me. The whole point of having music stored locally was that I wouldn't need to remained tethered to a network at all times. Plus, the best thing about the Zune player was its ability to shuffle. A lot of my music isn't available in Groove, so even with a shuffle function on Groove, I'd have to exclude a lot from my collection. I have some time to decide, I suppose. In any event, I suppose I'm lucky that I've been able to get this much functionality out of Zune, years after its death was declared. Even if it's now just a media player, that's fine, because it means I can listen to my massive music collection and podcasts without having to worry about dataplans and cellular access. As for the Zune Marketplace, it's been great having you. Checking out new music will be trickier now.