Microsoft’s Zune boys have just released politically themed Zunes! The company put some partisan stickers on the back of their 4GB music players and has begun handing them out to convention delegates. The Democratic Zune is green and the Republican is red. Both tout a MS-sponsored message of environmental harmony. Hmm, maybe we should have headed down to Denver!

An filing with the FCC has revealed that Microsoft’s latest, next-generation Zune update will come with 120GB worth of storage space for all your movies and videos,  but other than the added capacity, the hybrid touch and directional pad will remain the same. No word yet on when the bigger player will be released, but it could follow the fall launch […]

Microsoft have announced that the Zune will officially be a hockey playing, moose loving, beer drinker. The Zune team has made the official annoucement at CES 2008.

U.S. album sales died another 9.5 percent in 2007 according to figures released recently. A total of 500.5 million albums sold as CDs, cassettes(do people still have cassette players?), LPs (wow!) and other formats (8 track anyone?) were purchased last year, down 15 percent from 2006’s unit total, said Nielsen SoundScan. About 850 million digital tracks sold in 2007 from places such as iTunes, Zune.Net, Amazon.com and Emusic, compared to 588 million in 2006, and digital album sales accounting for 10 percent of total album purchases. Last year, iTunes became the third-largest music retailer in the U.S - behind Wal*Mart and Best Buy.

News that Sony BMG is moving to DRM-free downloads means all the major record labels have removed copyright-protection from their downloads - but what does this mean for Zune.Net and iTunes? Industry analysts have said Apple probably will lose market share in digital downloads as the majors gravitate away from DRM, the resulting increase in online music sales outlets will likely create a larger market in general.

Earlier this year, Universal Music Group big-cheese Doug Morris opted against a new 2-year contract with iTunes, and instead has a rolling month-to-month contract with Apple. According to a report today in BusinessWeek, the UMG is gearing up to launch an iTunes competing service of their own to be named “Total Music”. BMG Music have also thrown their name into the program and is having talks with Warner Music Group. Together the three companies music giants would have control of over 70% of all the music sold in the U.S., with Apple iTunes currently holding control of over 70% of the music sold online in the U.S.

Microsoft are not taking the launch of the new iPods lightly. Bill Gates glossed about the new Zune 2 and the launch date of November 2007 in a widespread video interview recently. If you’re not in the know, Zune 2 will be avabilabe 80Gig hard-drive, 8Gig and 4Gig flash editions.

A hot chick with a cute name from Microsoft said on Tuesday that it’s “not unreasonable” for the company to sell a mobile phone with the features of a Zune built in to compete with Apple’s iPhone. In light of Apple’s relative success with the iPhone, there may be a huge market for phones with integrated mobile media players, but that doesn’t necessarily mean a Zune based device would be a success. To date, the Zune hasn’t had anything resembling the success of the iPod, so there’s no reason to assume it would be a strong selling point for other devices.