With the year ending with the bizarre drama of 30GB Microsoft Zunes everywhere croaking in sudden, synchronized self-destruction, it’s time for a T-Poll. Three of them, actually. (UPDATE: Microsoft has figured out what happened, so I’m closing the polls…)

Good grief–vast numbers of folks with 30GB Microsoft MP3 players with the latest firmware are reporting that their players have reset and are stuck at a boot-up screen, and are therefore inoperable. It’s not clear what’s going on–the fact that Zune tech support has the day off probably doesn’t help–but Microsoft has posted a note stating that they’re aware of the glitches and are working on it.

For the sake of all those Zune owners, you gotta hope that there’s an easy fix–and that if it requires another firmware update, the fact that the Zunes can’t start up isn’t a roadblock.

Even if Microsoft manages to put things right swiftly, this is a huge embarrassment. I can’t think offhand of another major software company that’s had three recent instances of software accidentally crippling itself (the other two involved Windows Genuine Advantage screwing up the computers of paying Microsoft customers). And all the effort Microsoft has put into improving the Zune’s reputation through building better devices, software, and services may just have gone down the drain. If there’s a God of Technology-Product Reputations, he or she apparently has it in for the Zune platform.

More details when we get ‘em. I’m glad we didn’t do a story on the stupidest moments of the year, since we’d have posted it by now, and this just might be the stupidest of them all…

(UPDATE: We’re doing a little poll on all this. Take it here. Thanks!)

(FURTHER UPDATE: The official Zune Twitter feed says they’re making progress and might have news soon.)

Ed Bott’s take on Microsoft’s new Zune Pass update over at ZDNet is glowing. But there’s no part of it that I agree with. Where do we start?

Essentially, the price of the subscription service stays the same at $15, but now you are given 10 free “credits” to keep some of the tracks you have downloaded.

This means the subscription portion of the service costs an extra $5 per month. Nothing really new here: Yahoo was offering a $5 a month subscription service years ago, so its not like this price is some novel idea. Zune was overpriced to begin with.

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CNET’s Ina Fried has the details on an announcement to come from Microsoft on Wednesday which would cut prices of its Zune players by as much as 25 percent. While Ms. Fried seems to infer that has to do with tougher economic conditions — that very well may be — lets face it: Microsoft is becoming increasingly irrelevant in the digital music space.

After much chest-thumping surrounding the release of its flash-based players (the sector of the market where an overwhelming majority of players are sold), there still is no evidence that Redmond is gaining any traction with consumers.

Apple still is king, and Microsoft is just an also ran. It’s even fallen behind other makers such as SanDisk, one of the partners it left out in the cold when it all but abandoned its PlaysForSure technology last year. Here’s the lowdown:

The price cuts only affect the flash line and are as follows:

• 4GB drops from $129 to $99;
• 8GB drops from $149 to $139 ($10 cheaper than the Nano);
• and the 16GB from $199 to $179 ($20 cheaper than the Nano).

A few Microsoft produced accessories would also see some type of price reduction, although details were not released. The cuts would be accompanied by a new ad campaign which launched on Monday. I guess we’ll see if this change moves the needle any.

I’ll go out on a limb and say it won’t.

Okay so it might not be true Zune phone per se, but Microsoft does have designs to put Zune functionality in its Windows Mobile operating system soon. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer made the comments to British IT magazine CIO when asked why the company had created the music player in the first place.

“We built the Zune hardware with the Zune software – and what you’ll see more and more over time is that the Zune software will also be ported to and be more important not just with the hardware but on the PC, on Windows Mobile devices, etc.”

This is the first time that I can remember Ballmer specificially admitting the company had some interest in developing some type of “Zune phone.” All his previous comments, as far back as April of last year, have indicated the company had no interest.

I’d be willing to be the widespread success of the iPhone has changed that, and now with other competitors such as Nokia also moving to compete, not at least attempting to compete may be a bad idea for Microsoft.

Let us be clear here though: Microsoft is not going to develop or manufacture this phone themselves. But if these statements are to be taken at its face value, it sees to indicate Redmond will not stand in the way of any manufacturer who may be interested in launching a Zune phone.,

If you’re a Zune user and have any music you want to buy, better grab it over the weekend. A short mail sent by the Zune team to Zune users appeared just moments ago in my inbox:

The Zune service will be down for scheduled maintenance on Monday, September 29, 2008 from 12:01am Pacific Time, for up to 48 hours. During the downtime, Zune Social, the forums on Zune.net, and all of Zune Marketplace will be offline.

I’ve been busy looking around for some type of explanation as to why a two-day downtime would be needed. Zune team blogger Cesar Menedez is unusually silent as to a reason why Microsoft is deciding to do this, and the cadre of Zune enthusiast blogs don’t seem to be offering much either.

Don’t be surprised if this is just truly scheduled maintenance–after all, a few have complained of persistent bugs within the Zune service that have been there since the beginning. Microsoft may be taking the opportunity to address these issues. But there’s always the possibility that the Zune team will spring something on us.

So here’s what I’m hearing. Reliable sources are telling me that the “48 hour” figure really is more of a buffer in case something goes wrong, and in all likelihood the downtime would last less than a day. When it comes back, the end user is not going to notice any changes, but this is for a reason.

The changes appear to be all in the Zune service’s back end, save for a few bug fixes. Several of the sources described the back end changes to be “significant,” with some hinting that the update may have something to do with a future feature regarding video.

For whatever reason–likely because this is something Apple isn’t doing — I’m hitting a roadblock in getting more details on exactly what this feature may be. Apparently it’s out there and has been speculated on, so we’re busy searching as you read this for clues as to what it may be.

More on this story through the weekend as we learn more.

[UPDATE: We may have found the connection between the Xbox Live and Zune downtime that are happening concurrently. CNET's Ina Fried talked with Zune chie Joe Belfiore two weeks ago. At the time, he said the capability to transfer videos from the Zune to the Xbox and vice versa wasn't available now, but "we're not really that far off technologically from being able to offer that feature." It's possible that this could be the new feature being talked about.

Then again, Apple is already doing this, going from iPod<-->AppleTV, so maybe this might not be it. But it's probably as good of a lead as we have at the moment.]

Steve Jobs goes onstage to unveil new iPods at 10am today; we’ll all be drowning in coverage of them shortly thereafter. So I understand why Microsoft made its Zune announcements yesterday morning.
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