New Zunes and music recommendation services

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Microsoft today unveiled its fall line up of Zunes ($249 for the 120 gigabyte model; $199 for the 16 gigabyte model and $149 for the 8 gig flash model) and a bunch of new features, such as the ability to buy music if you hear a song on the Zune’s FM receiver and search wirelessly for new music.

And yes, Microsoft is introducing a Pandora-like algorithm that gives you music recommendations and channels from scanning your music library. The service will create channels for you as well, based on what you listen to and what others similar to you like.

But the thing that intrigued me comes with the Zune free PC software download. It’s a program called ‘Mixview.’

The service creates a visual map of artists’ influences, similar acts, bands they influence and the libraries of the top listeners of the artists. In other words, this could settle epic battles among friends and spouses, some whom like to lord their music knowledge over others who didn’t happen to see the Clash live four times. I plan to consult Mixview as soon as it is available (next week) to see if it agrees with my contention that the Montreal band Arcade Fire has genetic links to David Bowie and to Prefab Sprout, an indie band from the 1980s.

Mixview could have an addictive quality. At Microsoft, the Zune team plays with Mixview as if it were the game ‘Six degrees of Kevin Bacon,’ Microsoft spokesman Adam Sohn said. They challenge each other over who can guess the connections between the music of Sarah McLachlan and Ozzy Osbourne, he said.

If you don’t have a Zune Marketplace subscription ($14.99 a month), you won’t be able to listen to more than 30 seconds of any tracks. Nor can you take Mixview with you on your non-Zune MP3 player. Sohn says Microsoft is hoping that Mixview and other Zune social networking experiences will be ‘on-ramps’ for people to buy into the Zune hardware and marketplace. ‘We think this experience is so cool, people will want to transact at the store,’ Sohn says.

-- Michelle Quinn

Photo: New Zunes. Credit: Microsoft