One of the joys of Zune Pass ownership is that, once a month, you get to download ten ‘own-it-forever’ tracks of your choice.

I am gradually accumulating my all-time favorite tracks this way. I think I want to get more organized about how I go about that. I’m a believer in subscription music, but it’s great to select those free Download-To-Own (DTO) tracks each month.

Zune Pass holders: how do you decide which DTO tracks to download each month? Got any tips for me?

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In case you missed this, anyone with a Zune Pass subscription can select ten tracks each month, to download and own forever. This is in addition to the unlimited Zune Pass access to a multitude of tracks in Zune Marketplace.

If Zune has a killer feature, it’s Zune Pass..!

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(Most Zune 30s, including mine, became frozen on December 31st, but re-booted back to life on January 1. The problem was a ‘leap year’ bug in a date driver associated with the Zune 30’s freescale processor.)

From the various reports I’ve seen, the problem seems to be occurring for owners who broke the seal on their Zune 30 and unseated the battery. The fix apparently is to reseat the battery, attempt a reboot of the 30 until the battery drains, and then let the Zune 30 sit, unplugged, for 24 hours. Then connect it to a power source (AC adapter or USB connection to a PC). Your Zune 30 should boot up normally.

I don’t think there are many instances of this problem. Almost everyone is our forums had their Zune 30s come back to life automatically on the morning of the 1st. But if yours didn’t, give the above advice a shot and see if that helps!

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To get the most out of your player, join us in our Zune user forums! We have many members who have ’seen it all’ and who like to help other Zune owners.

We also have a thread dedicated to giving tips to new Zune owners. Check it out!

Merry Christmas Eve, to our regular forum members and to the new Zune users who will join us this holiday season!

If you expect you’ll be finding a Zune under your tree this year, we welcome you to join our forums! We have many members who have ’seen it all’ and who like to help other Zune owners.

We also have a thread dedicated to giving tips to new Zune owners. Check it out, and welcome to Zunerama!

Moody + WillysJeepMan = MoodyZune

Zunerama member WillysJeepMan, has managed to create an app that enables Zune users to tag songs and create playlists based on mood. The app is based roughly on Moody, a small little app created for iTunes users to easily and quickly create mood playlists. Hard at work, he has posted a link to download a beta version for Zune users: MoodyZune Version 0.8

With this version WillyJeepMan notes for testers: This is beta code.  It requires Zune Software 3.0.  If you choose to try it out, please make sure that you read the included instructions before running it and only try it with tracks that you have backup copies for until you are comfortable with how it works.

Be sure to check out the thread in our forums and post feedback on your experiences with the app!

Thanks Willy! As new versions are available, we’ll be sure to let everyone know.

This was a new one to me, when Zunerama member rdhoss encountered this scary “NG” screen when trying to upgrade his Zune firmware to 3.0.

Fortunately the “NG” display (‘no go?’ ‘no good?’) went away after a couple of reboots, and his player updated without further misbehavior.

Now another member, Brponder, has reported it. To get it around, Brponder cleared the firmware and content from his player. (Here’s how.)

He’s still having album/artist problems, but I’m guessing that’s an unrelated issue.

Anyone else out there seen the big ‘NG’ screen?

Update: This is indeed a  sign that the Zune’s firmware didn’t update properly. There’s a Microsoft KB article on how to resolve it. Thanks, SocialCircle!

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If your Zune player is misbehaving, you can often straighten things out quickly. Try the following, in this sequence. Often the first step or two will resolve your issue.

• Turn it off and then on again. I know it’s obvious, but that’s often all you have to do.
• Reboot. (Press and hold Back and Up.)

If that doesn’t work, the following steps are little more involved but may be worth a try.

• Reformat. (This will clear the content from your hard drive, so if you do this, you’ll have to resync it all!) You can do this either:
  • In Zune software: Settings > Device > Sync Options > Erase All Content.
  • …or right from your player:
    • (For Zune 30gb:) Reboot, then press Back and Right and OK altogether once you see the black screen.
    • (For Zune 4/8/80/120gb): Reboot, then press Back and Play together once you see the black screen.
• Initialize Disk. This removes content and firmware from your player. You won’t be able to use it until you re-connect to a PC with Zune software.
  • (For Zune 30gb: Reboot, then press Back and Left and OK altogether once you see the black screen.
  • (For Zune 4/8/80/120gb): Reboot, then press Back and OK and Play together once you see the black screen.

Thanks to Matt from the Zune team for clarifying the button sequences.

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With release 3.0, Zune introduces support for audiobooks from market leader Audible.com, as well as Overdrive.com.

Today we’ll look at the Audible experience.

Audiobooks are not available directly from Zune Marketplace; instead you sign up and download your books from the Audible.com website. To sync your audiobooks to your player, you use Audible’s PC client software. We’re thinking that before long all of this will be controllable directly from Zune software.

Still, I found the process to be painless. Once you’ve signed up as an Audible subscriber, you can buy and download audiobooks as you normally would. The audiobook I downloaded was 8 hours and about 200MB.

Zune appears as a device in the Audible client software on your PC. Syncing the audiobook was startlingly fast – in fact, I didn’t believe it had synced until I disconnected my player and saw the audiobook loaded and ready to play.

Once you’ve synced an audiobook to a player, the audiobook option appears on the player’s main menu.

If you’re not yet an Audible subscriber, use this link to subscribe – it gives Zune users a 30-day free trial, in which you can download your choice of audiobook and try it out.

Zune treats audiobooks much like podcasts on your player. Here’s a shot of my downloaded audiobook – the current bestseller 13 Things That Don’t Make Sense. (You can also see the Your First Listen welcoming audiobook from Audible.)

Clicking on the desired audiobook gives you the options of resuming from where you last left off, or playing from the beginning. Zune doesn’t yet support “round-tripping” – i.e. synchronizing your “resume” spot between your PC and your player.

Fast-forward, reverse, play, pause and volume controls are available while playing an audiobook from the device.

This audiobook support is a welcome advance in Zune capabilities. We’ll look separately at Overdrive audiobook support, which is used widely by libraries and bookstores.

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It’s been one of the more controversial Zune features, as it does away with the conventional 5-star rating system used by iTunes, Windows Media Player, and others.

Well, this post may be for you. This morning Zunerama member ballbagcheese posts a trick to using genres as a customized rating system.

He notes that Zune software lets you create genres by clicking on an album or track. His concept is to set up a separate genre for each “star” rating – for example, Rock 5 *, Rock 4 *, Jazz 5 *, etc.

Another method is to use an unused metatag field – say, “conductor” – and put 5-star rating info into that field. You can then use autoplaylists to pull all of our 5-star tracks automatically.

The downside – you can do this in Zune software, but not from the player itself. Still, for those of you who want a more graduated rating system than Love It / Hate It… it’s one way to work around it!

See more details, and reactions from other Zuners, here.

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