Lars Wilhelmsen » Playlists http://www.larswilhelmsen.com Computer Software Guy Living Between the Edge and Corner Cases Wed, 11 Jan 2012 13:05:06 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Zune Marketplace: Playlists – a Word of Warning http://www.larswilhelmsen.com/2008/12/05/zune-marketplace-playlists-a-word-of-warning/ http://www.larswilhelmsen.com/2008/12/05/zune-marketplace-playlists-a-word-of-warning/#comments Fri, 05 Dec 2008 19:29:44 +0000 larsw http://larsw.wordpress.com/2008/12/05/zune-marketplace-playlists-a-word-of-warning/ I’m still very satisfied with the 120GB black Zune that I bought during my trip to the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference 2008 in the end of October. I found a way to use my own Norwegian credit card with the combination of the regional settings in Windows set to “USA” and a borrowed, real address in … LA :-) I first signed up for the 14 day Zune Pass trial – and I was definitely sold.

Luckily, the tricks worked with the real Zune Pass subscription too – so now I’m in my first month of using the Zune Marketplace for for real. I’ve download a great deal of the music I own from before since I’m lazy and haven’t hooked up the external hard drive with the backup of all my music (I’m a recovering CD junkie, so my shelves are filled with albums) so it is a bit weird not having the physical media for some my newly-acquired music.

Here the other day some ads for “The very best of 199X” hit lists turned up on the front page of the Picks section of the Marketplace. Guess what, the summer of 1996 I was 18 and could legally get into pubs and drink beer, so there is a lot of the music from that year that awakes good memories. A good example is The Fugees, that had at least 3 or 4 big hits during the spring, summer and fall.

Back to the playlist. When I saw this “The very best of 1996” playlist I immediately added it to my Downloads list and went to bed. The morning after it was all sitting on my local disk, so I synchronized the Zune and head off for work.

At the train I picked up the Zune, plugged in my Bose QC2 headphones and navigated to the 1996 playlist.

Guess what?

My Zune was infested with crap. Crap. More crap. Unmentionable crap. Boring crap. Boyband crap. Dull drama crap. Crap.

Some example crap artist & songs:

  • Celine Dijon – err. Dion
  • Los del Rio – Macarena
  • Maxi Priest
  • Coolio
  • Barbra Streisand
  • Toni Braxton
  • Hanson
  • …

And the list just goes on and on and on and on.

And I forgot to mention that I also downloaded the list for 1997 & 98. sic.

So, what is the morale of this story?

DON’T – I REPEAT DON’T – DOWNLOAD PLAYLISTS FROM OTHER PEOPLE / BEST OF / HIT LISTS WITHOUT CHECKING THE CONTENT OF IT FIRST.

It really garbles the navigation system of the Zune so I have a major cleanup in front of me.

I kept the worst part to the last: Guess what? Since the fine piece of hardware (and the SW player too) keeps tracks of all the tunes you’ve played – the crap may show up on your Zune Tag and possibly affect the content that turns up in the Picks section.

Urgh. Sorry for bothering you with this rant – but the warning is well-meant. Have a nice weekend :-)

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