I don’t mean to be the one to brag about all of this, but this is basically our doing. Yep, here at Zunited we like to campaign. Like when we told Microsoft that Windows Phone 7 Series Phones Devices Mobile Handsets was way too long of a name. What did they do? They shortened it. Well, Microsoft Points is just another battle in the long series of wars we’ve got going on with Microsoft here. If you’ve followed the podcast at all then you know how much we dislike…HATE…Microsoft Points. We even had a podcast episode titled “Microsoft Points Suck“.
(Our latest campaign? To stop Microsoft from using the letters “kin” in that order too much. Join us!)
All right, so we alone may not be the reason for this but Yahoo! is reporting that Microsoft will be opening up the Zune Marketplace and allow for credit card purchases instead of just buying Microsoft Points.
Microsoft said that anybody who looked up a track on Bing would now be able to stream the track for free via Zune and “purchase any of the millions of pure MP3s from the Zune catalogue.” The move fits with Microsoft’s strategy of pushing its Zune-related services, as opposed to the Zune device itself, and should give the Zune brand some new exposure. After all, while Bing may still lag badly behind Google in the search market, it is attracting millions of searchers a month.
While allowing credit card purchases alone may not gain Zune any more exposure it sure will help alleviate the pains of its current users. Microsoft Points have been the burden of Zune customers for quite some time–people do not like them because they must be bought in bulk and there are always Points leftover that you cannot use. That said, some find them useful.
The new credit card purchasing will allow you to bypass buying any Points and go straight to downloading the song. Users will still have the option to buy points, however.
Yahoo! states that Zune is behind iTunes and Amazon in the digital music market share with 2.6%. Amazon has 7.6%, iTunes has 69.1%.
