Share Unrestricted Music with your Zune

Did you know that the Zune, the mp3 player from Microsoft, has a filesharing feature that is probably one of the best ever implemented in mp3 players? Did you also know that Microsoft restricted playback of song shared using that filesharing option to three playbacks in the new Zune players? The old players had an even tougher restriction set in place, their restriction was three plays or three days.

Songs do expire when they reach either limit which made the wonderful filesharing feature less attractive and more or less unusable. Users over at the Zune Scene website have found a way to bypass the three play rule limit of the Zune by changing the genre of the song to Podcast.

Yes, that is all, change it to Podcast, send it to another Zune and witness for yourself that music exchanged that way can be played indefinitely. It requires some work though because each and every song has to be defined as a podcast. The user of the second Zune can naturally change the genre back without imposing the playback restrictions.

To change the genre right-click on the files, select properties from the context menu and select podcast from the Summary tab under Genre.

While that requires some manual hacking especially if you plan on exchanging multiple songs, it may be a great option to quickly send someone a couple of great songs that they can listen to for as long as they want. Depending on the country you are living in this may be perfectly legal which makes the three play rule even more absurd than it is. Note that you need to perform this operation when the songs are accessible on your PC. It may be best to prepare all songs you plan to trade with a friend this way so that you can transfer them directly to your friend's Zune device.