My money is still on iPhone, but LG+Windows Mobile 7 could really challenge my loyalty lol.

I have used Napster (the legal version), Yahoo! Music and now the Zune Marketplace. I have downloaded over 15,000 individual songs with each service. What idiot would pay $15,000 for music? I’ve paid about $720 over the last 4 years for my music. In 79 YEARS, if I never download another song, I’ll be losing money on the deal.

The first advantage, in one word, accessories. Every manufacturer that has anything to do with audio, from Bose to JVC to Taiwan Charlie’s, has some sort of device with an iPod dock. Outside of a JVC speaker dock I’ve seen, all of the Zune accessories are Microsoft. And, come on, $30 for a wall charger that doesn’t even include an extra sync cable? Um, for $10, I can get the same thing with a mini USB cable AND a car charger included.

The second advantage is the pricing structure on iTunes. I’ve never used iTunes but, the way I perceive it, I could pick, say, 3 songs and Apple would charge my credit card $3.97 for those three clearly labeled $0.99 songs. The Zune marketplace makes you pre-pay a chunk of money that you may or may not use and the pricing structure is in ‘points’ that don’t correlate to how much money you pre-pay (how hard would it be to say $10.00 is 1,000 points or, here’s a thought, get rid of the points altogether). To top it off, the way the points are assigned it is almost mathematically impossible to spend down to zero. You always have a remaining balance that is not enough to purchase another track. Really, how much money corresponds to 79 points? Is it 99 cents? Is it $1.29? Is it $375.00? I don’t know but I don’t really want to fork over $10 or $15 for an account just for the privilege of buying one track that I have no idea how much I am actually spending to get.

Just not enough shiny sheen on it, I guess, or enough commercializing and market whoring. It’s a damned shame.