Do you want to know something we hate? We hate it when there’s a really hot Internet rumor, the kind that gets our attention and makes you, our readers, stand up and take notice, and then it turns out to be total bullshit. Complete rubbish. Well, almost complete.
We mentioned yesterday that we’ve been hearing buzz about Microsoft’s idea to compensate Zune owners for sharing their music virally, as that is one of the main reasons for the Zune’s existence. In a nutshell, the theory was that if other Zune owners buy music they downloaded from your Zune, you get credits. Amass enough credits, and they can be used to purchase songs.
It’s a fabulous idea for Zune, as it encourages people to use its unique features, which is the key to its success if it plans on fully dethroning the iPod. Alas, it’s crap. We spoke with several Zune team members last night, and after several cocktails, we got them to confirm that it’s not true.
They did acknowledge that it’s a fine idea, and that there “might be something similar later on down the product line,” but, at least at launch, it’s garbage. Sorry, Zune fans, we didn’t mean to get you all excited. Well, we did mean to get you excited, but we didn’t mean to leave you with Zune blue balls.