No, Zune does Not support iTunes Libraries

This post by Matt Rosoff over at the CNet Digital Noise blog was brought to my attention by a colleague today. It is a response to an earlier NY Times article by Saul Hansell that forwards the hypothesis that iPod to Zune converts are scarce because most users have so much data inputted into iTunes that moving to new jukebox software requires a substantial commitment of time and effort.

The CNet article responds to this hypothesis by claiming that the Zune jukebox software can, in fact, support existing iTunes libraries. The author points out that the Zune software plays AAC files (the native ripping format for iTunes), and that it scans the default iTunes music directory for files on startup.

Unfortunately, what he fails to realize is that these actions do not in and of themselves constitute support of the iTunes library format. Real support would be an XML reader that allowed users to actually import their libraries – including all meta data, album art, playlists, and ratings – into the Zune jukebox software.

Songbird (an open source media player that supports plugins, and looks as though it will be very interesting come v1.0) does provide such a feature (as an optional plugin), that works extremely well. It is also rumoured to support Zune players, and will likely be my new media player of choice if they get smart playlists implemented any time soon.

Instead, Rosoff claims that the lack of converts between players is due to a lack of compelling Zune features, and overall customer satisfaction with the iPod product. While these claims may in fact be true, his argument about Zune support for iTunes libraries is downright false. Hansell, on the other hand has it right with this statement:

But now many iPods are replacements by people who already have substantial music collections in iTunes. For those people, the choice is between buying an iPod that will simply work with all their music or investing the time and effort to try to convert everything into Zune’s formats.

Where the term ‘formats’ is not referring only to the physical format of music files on the Users’ machine, but also to the internal database format that their library is kept in within their jukebox software. As a user of both players, I fall into this category – my library contains well over 8K songs, most of which are properly tagged, rated, and organized into playlists. While the Zune jukebox did indeed recognize, import, and find correct meta data for most of my files, it did not retain their ratings, number of plays, number of skips, or any of the other handy errata that iTunes assembles for every file in its library, or any of my playlists.

In my own opinion, the reason that the Zune has yet to dent the iPod monopoly is due mostly to the fact that it is roughly the same price as the iPod, and its two features that could very well kill the iPod require a snowball effect of users to make a dent.

I’m talking about the wireless music and photo sharing, and the much-hyped Zune social. Wireless sharing is basically a non-feature here in Canada, as I can only think of two other people that I know who have Zunes, and have never found one while using the Zune in public. The Zune social suffers from the same lack of users, as well as crippled functionality outside of the Continential USA.

That said, if these features were to gain enough users that it became commonplace for everybody to know at least one friend who owned a Zune, well then Microsoft might have an iPod killer on their hands. Until then, it is just as Hansell says – Microsoft is still waiting for the Zune Generation.

Edit: The latest release candidate of Songbird supports smart playlists (that are almost identical to the feature in iTunes), but has yet to implement Zune support. Being open source however, it’s just a matter of time. Check this page out for more info on new Songbird features.