Zune 2.5

Like many folks, I've been a big fan of my Zune 80, but not as much for the software that comes with it.  I have a decent size music collection, and it's been a seemingly never ending chore to relentlessly organize albums, correct track data, and find the album covers.  Many were ripped from the CD's before I had internet access at the house, and the mistakes were aplenty.  Unfortunately, with the previous Zune software, editing metadata and track tags was not possible in the Zune software, and required additional programs to fix up the tracks.  In fact, while I delved into it enthusiastically over the winter, it had officially fallen by the wayside within a few weeks, and I left "good enough" alone.

However, this Microsoft team continues to be quite good at listening to the customer base, and has shown a dedication to "getting it right."  This week, both the player and the software got the 2.5 revision.  You can read all the changes here.  Details aside, I am pleased to say that now the tracks can be edited for metadata right within the Zune software.  Not only can I manually change the track details, but now I can also look up the albums that I have in their database to match things up, correct the track numbers and song titles, and even grab the album cover.  In one night, I did what would have taken me a week to do before!

While some may focus on the new video offerings in the Zune Marketplace, or the default that now the wireless sharing is on, for me the better track tagging makes firmware/software 2.5 a must have upgrade.  If you've been on the fence, don't hesitate to take the plunge on this one.

Comments

[Mike]

From reading about the metadata update on another forum, it still seems as if editing a track in the Zune software doesn't actually change any of the file information itself. So if this is the case it seems like it would still be better to use a 3rd party program to edit the metadata so if you end up getting another MP3 player in the future, all of the track information will be correct. Can you confirm this?