About 3 weeks ago I decided it was time to join the MP3 revolution. I did some research and decided that I wanted to go with portability over extreme storage size. Initially I thought I would go for a 60 Gig Zen Xtra. iPod is absolutely not a consideration for me because I prefer WMA format and I don't want to load iTunes just so I can use it. I ended up walking out of Best Buy with the Samsung YP-MT6Z (1 Gig). I went to the store thinking that I would prefer the Creative Zen Micro because I wanted to store several albums at a time. When I saw the size of the flash based devices I changed my mind. The in stock Zen only came in black did not look appealing to me either.
The Samsung player has been fantastic. I am still running on the battery that came with it in the box. They claim 42 hours on a single AA battery and I am convinced that must be accurate. My player still shows no sign of battery weakness. I have loaded about 10 albums on it in addition to several hours of spoken audio. I give a solid A-. Read on to learn why I cannot rate it higher.
Yesterday I read that Yahoo had a new subscription music service. I decided to give it a run because the price point was only $4.99 /mo. I was excited to start downloading anything I wanted to listen to. With a click I get almost any album I can imagine. I am now convinced that CD based music as we currently know it is going to disappear in the near future. I will go so far as to predict that even MP3 players as we know them today will change. What I believe will happen is that we will end up with devices like car stereos and cell phones that have some flash memory for caching a short playlist. That playlist will sync with a subscription service whenever the device can get connectivity to the Internet. Wireless broadband technologies will enable this. Devices will even allow you to request songs on demand, probably through a speech interface.
Now that I have tasted the beauty of subscription music on demand at an affordable price point I have a huge complaint about my WMA/MP3 Player. It does not support DRM10 or whatever the standard is for enabling subscription content on portable devices. The current list of devices supporting subscriptions is very short. There are only 13 devices in the list. None of them are high capacity flash devices. Matter of fact none of them are flash devices at all except a cell phone. My plan now is to see how far I can get with the 30 day return policy at Best Buy. If they will take back the Samsung I am going to get the Zen Micro. In my opinion the Micro is the best option for a portable device that supports subscription music and everything else I want in a player. I hope that we don't have to wait long for the industry to catch up with DRM standards and devices. At $5/mo. I will probably become a subscriber for life and never buy another CD again. Instead I will outfit my home, vehicles, and my pocket for the Any Music, Any Time future!