The App Chronicles #1: #ZuneTune for Windows Phone 7

I seriously grappled with how I wanted to approach this: Did I want to just spring it on everyone when it was completed or near completion? Did I want to allow people to join me every step of the way in its development? How exactly did I want to approach this?

Well it must seem apparent which avenue I’m taking.

I want to declare that I’ve decided to develop (or work with getting developed) an official #ZuneTune application for Windows Phone 7. In a nutshell, the #ZuneTune app will allow people to share, via Facebook and Twitter the songs that they are listening to on their Windows Phone device. However, it will also include the #ZuneTune hashtag and include links to the song in the Zune Marketplace.

First, a bit of backstory.

Sometime ago (Summer 2009, to be exact), myself and a member of the Zune Team (Shane DeSeranno) developed a community meme, by which Zune users on Twitter could share what music they were listening to. The idea was that they would use the #ZuneTune tag, the name of the song, the artist and a link to the song in the Zune Marketplace (example). With the type of social reach that Twitter has it would make an awesome way for Zune users to connect from anywhere in the U.S.

Initially, the idea took off like wildfire. People were sharing songs left and right and we even managed to work in a way to gather up all of these tweeted songs and create a playlist that everyone could download and play in their Zune software. This idea was really going somewhere and had the potential to be a social-changing app as far as music discovery was concerned.

Then came the changes.

With some of the changing to the design of the Zune website, many found it difficult to share the songs that they wanted and include a link, so what ended up happening was that people  would just share the song information. While that was fine, having that link was a key component that made the #ZuneTune movement work. My friend, Neville was able to find a way so that people could use Bing to share songs, but eventually the movement died down but, at least in my mind, it was never forgotten.

The Zune HD has Twitter and Facebook apps that allow people to share their songs. However, the Twitter app especially was kinda feeble in its execution. You could only tweet out the song and the artist. There was no #ZuneTune tag and no link to the song in the marketplace. The Facebook app did better in that your post included the album cover, song information and a link to the song in zune.net (very well done).

The #ZuneTune app (at its most basic level) will do the happy middle of these sharing techniques. With Twitter, you’ll be able to share the tag, song information, link to the Marketplace and some room for commentary. With Facebook, you’ll pretty much get the same experience as the Zune HD. Over time, I would love for the app to pull in a select number of these songs and have a tab called “Community Playlist” where, within the app, you could listen to a sampling of what other songs people are sharing, maybe even give them a +1, etc.

Of course there are questions to be answered, not the least of which is how to prevent people from spamming the list with one song. Those are questions that should be answered over time if this application is to be effective and something that the Zune community would enjoy using.

So why am I telling you this? Because I want you to join me, Neville and some others as we journey to getting this app completed and placed into the Windows Phone Marketplace. Right now we’re at the brainstorming stage, putting together a wishlist of what this app could do if there were unlimited resources at our disposal. Then comes figuring out what’s plausible and time frames.

But I’m not going to get ahead of myself on this. As I journal this, feel free to offer comments, ideas, thoughts, criticisms and whatever else is on your mind. Seeing as the whole point of this app is community sharing, I would love to hear what you guys think as things happen.

Now, I don’t know if Zune plans (or ever plans to) include this as a native feature of the OS, but honestly, for the satisfaction of having a completed app, I would love to see this all the way to completion.

So join me on this journey. I plan to encounter highs, lows, frustrations, breakthroughs and copious amounts of coffee.