I’ve been seeing a bunch of ads about Microsoft’s Zune Pass lately, especially the annoying “it costs $30,000 to fill an iPod” line that they are using. The thing is, no one fills their iPod with single, 99 cent purchases. Albums cost less than the sum of every individual song in the album. People already have CDs, download movies, download illegally, share with their friends – there’s just so many conditions to the $30,000 statement that you would have to put a massive asterisk on it. I wanted to figure out what was so special about this deal, though, so I went to check.

They have three main arguments as to why their store is better than Apple’s: The $14.99 vs. $30,000, buyer’s remorse, and “it’s not a buyer’s market”. Out of those three, only the second one sounded convincing to me. It does suck when you buy a song on iTunes and you can’t give it back. For the $15 per month, you get to keep 10 songs. If you’re a music aficionado, you may perhaps feel that the extra $5 is worth all the browsing and listening that you will be doing. Even so, however, there are free music streaming sites such as imeem. I can use services such as imeem to find out if I really like the song in question, then buy it from iTunes or Amazon. No subscription fees. No hassle. As a subscription service, they perhaps have some advantages over a service that only offers 30 second samples. In my humble opinion, though, they do need something other than the $30,000 pitch. Filling up any music player the size of the iPod classic with music and music only is quite impractical. As said before, I heavily doubt anyone will fill their iPod with single song purchases as opposed to mixing in some albums, borrowing CDs from friends, etc. Ideologically speaking, the math makes sense. The problem is, simple math doesn’t always portray real life accurately.

But, of course, I also suggest you check it out from the source and develop an opinion of your own.