Windows Phone 7 Tip–How to share music with friends

To kind of understand why I’m pushing to have a #ZuneTune app created, you should understand how sharing is done currently via the Windows Phone OS. Of course, since the OS doesn’t allow you to take screenshots of the device, allow me to verbally tell you what’s going on.

The only thing that you can share, at this point, is albums. That’s done by holding your finger on the album cover. If you simply tap the album cover, you’re presented with the options of repeat, favorite and shuffle. If you hold the finger, you’ll get the option to share.

Currently, there are two ways to share: email or text. If you do either one you send a link to a friend.

Text Message:

If you receive a text message, and you use a Windows Phone 7, you’ll see IE open up with the whole taking you to Zune Marketplace. However, the device marketplace opens up right to the album (nice). From there you can listen to the album (if you have Zune Pass, this is extremely handy).

If you receive a text message, and you don’t use a Windows Phone 7 you’re taken to the same webpage that shows that the Zune software is trying to open up. If you leave it alone and let it try to connect to something, the page will stop and it won’t send you anywhere. You obviously can’t say that your phone has Zune, because it doesn’t. So if you tell it that you don’t have Zune, well then the link becomes kinda useless.

So obviously sharing from Windows Phone to Windows Phone is the ideal scenario.

Email:

If you send the messsage to a friend’s Hotmail account (or whatever email client), they’ll see a simple message that says:

1234567890@txt.att.net <no subject>

Check out…<song information with link>

You can obviously add information to the text or the email so it’s a bit more personal.

When the link is clicked and you tell the webpage that you have the Zune Software, then you’re taken to the album in the Zune software marketplace.

Again, this is all well and good, but I truly want to see social integration where you can share to Twitter and Facebook. Hence, the need for a native integration into the OS or a #ZuneTune app.

App Chronicles #3 (Like Martin and Will, we be bad boys…)

Like I’ve said, I’m not the only one putting the #ZuneTune application in motion. I’m working alongside a fellow Zune MVP who sees as much value in this as I do. He’s Neville Williams and I’m honored to be working alongside him, getting his input as this moves along.

But rather than me go on and on about his perceptions of this, I’ll let him tell you:

"You would be surprised how much Marques and I talk about Zune and its various services. Similar to the way he got me into blogging, Marques invited me to write an app with him after some discussion about #ZuneTune and the lack of such a feature being integrated into the Twitter app on both Zune HD and Windows Phone 7. The talk to develop an app to supplement this missing functionality pushed me to follow through on a longstanding desire of mine, learning to write code in SOME language. As tech focused as I can be, I should be able to walk-the-walk. In general I feel I have little to no coding experience. I can find embedded mp3s in most webpages, tweak a little HTML, and can follow terminal-based tutorials. However, when it comes to free expression via code… not so much. In making an app like this there are a lot of questions to a lot of unknowns.

While Marques has talked about the aesthetic of the app I want to share more on my motivation. My first goal is to learn as much as I can about coding in Silverlight before going deep into the process of making a #ZuneTune app. Beyond that I want to make an app that people will use. Honestly, if current usage of the #ZuneTune hashtag is any indication of future usage we are simply making this app for us (Marques and myself) and a few of our followers (Denard, I’m looking at you).

The closest analog to this feature that I know of is ingrained within the iTunes desktop program. The feature allows an individual to share songs that are in iTunes Store, from the iTunes Store. Excepting the occasional Last.fm mention, and looking at my Twitter stream, to my knowledge, I have not seen any of my friends take advantage of this feature to share what music they are playing. If none of my iPod/Phone using friends have shared what they are playing on Twitter, using iTunes links, is sharing music on social networks all that interesting? Or, is this a case where the implementation of sharing music on Twitter has yet to be perfected?

A third possibly viable option is a lack of song tagging thanks to laziness i.e. you know what you are listening to but your software does not. Partly because I am making an app to answer this question, I am inclined to believe the second possibility. As an aside, if you use Zune and your music is not tagged, you are missing out on some of the best features of Zune. People share pictures on Twitter, and that seems pretty popular. People use #np or #nowplaying, but why stop there? The same way we  quip "pics or it didn’t happen," why not say "#ZuneTune or it isn’t playing?" Our music tweets need links that exploit the ease of Zune Pass and take us to easily playable music.

Right now I am on video number four from Channel 9′s helpful series on how to become a Windows Phone 7 Developer. Morale is high and Marques and I seem to be learning fast. Hopefully these videos plus a little community help (pretty please?) can get us to the point where sharing  Zune music on Twitter is as simple as sharing a photo."