Zune

Microsoft's answer to the iPod, five years late

Shut down
19902026

Zune was Microsoft's iPod competitor, launched in November 2006 in an infamous shade of brown. Well-reviewed but perpetually irrelevant, its hardware died in 2011 and its music services on 15 November 2015. The Zune software's design language, however, became Metro, and shaped Windows Phone and modern Microsoft design.

Timeline [edit]

  1. 2006
  2. 14 November 2006 Launch
    Zune 30 launches

    Brown, WiFi song-squirting, and a marketing mountain to climb.

  3. 2008
  4. 6 May 2008 Peak
    Over two million Zunes sold

    Respectable in absolute terms; a rounding error next to the iPod.

  5. 2009
  6. 15 September 2009 Version
    Zune HD ships

    OLED, brilliant typography-first UI, critical acclaim, tiny sales.

  7. 2011
  8. 3 October 2011 Shutdown announced
    Hardware discontinued

    Microsoft confirms no new Zune devices.

  9. 2012
  10. 26 October 2012 Rebrand
    Services become Xbox Music

    The Zune brand starts disappearing.

  11. 2015
  12. 15 November 2015 Shutdown
    Zune services retire

    Remaining subscribers move to Groove Music Pass.

The site through time

Browse zune.net as it was, via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:

2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 2015 Full archive →

Ownership [edit]

Microsoft 2006–2015 Founded Hardware dead 2011, services dead 2015

Key figures [edit]

MetricValueAs ofConfidence
Downloads ▲ 2 million 6 May 2008 Reported Cumulative device sales reported by May 2008

Confirmed official figures · Reported media, cites a source · Estimated analyst or our estimate

Why it shut down [edit]

Official line: Microsoft stopped making Zune hardware in October 2011 and retired the remaining Zune services on 15 November 2015, moving subscribers to Groove Music.

Our analysis: Zune was competent hardware chasing a market Apple had already won culturally. Five years after the iPod, brown was not the differentiator, and by the time Zune HD got good, the whole category was dying under the smartphone.

History [edit]

Squirting into history

The first Zune arrived in November 2006, five years after the iPod: a chunky 30GB player, available in brown, with WiFi sharing that let you "squirt" songs to nearby Zunes, where they expired after three plays. The internet never stopped laughing at either the verb or the DRM. Zune Pass, though, was quietly ahead of its time: $14.99 a month for unlimited downloads, a subscription model years before streaming won.

Later devices got genuinely good; the 2009 Zune HD was sleek, with an OLED screen and a radical typography-first interface. Reviewers approved. Buyers bought iPods. Zune's US market share never escaped the low single digits, and Apple sold more iPods in a quarter than Zune did in its lifetime.

Dead device, immortal design

Microsoft killed the hardware in October 2011, folded the services into Xbox Music in 2012, and finally retired Zune services on 15 November 2015, converting the last Zune Pass loyalists to Groove. The real legacy shipped elsewhere: the Zune HD's interface grew into Metro, the design language of Windows Phone and Windows 8, and the butt of the jokes became, in retrospect, one of the era's most influential pieces of software design. The brown one is a collector's item now.

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Sources [edit]

  1. Microsoft's Zune services wind down November 15th Engadget 16 September 2015 [archived]
  2. Microsoft finally kills off Zune The Register 16 September 2015 [archived]

Last verified: 11 August 2026. Spotted an error? Suggest an edit (corrections with sources are reviewed and applied).