Eight Great Ways to Get the Most from Your Zune

Going Shopping

The Zune Marketplace lets you buy and lease content for your new Zune media player. For about a buck a track, you can own your Zune media outright—or at least as outright as the terms of service allow you. At $14.99 per month, the "all-you-can-eat" Zune Pass subscription lets you download and listen to all the music you want until your Pass expires. Here's what you need to know about shopping at the Marketplace.

Getting Started with Zune Marketplace

Every new Zune comes straight from the box with a free 14-day trial of Zune Marketplace. For two weeks from the time you activate your subscription, you may download and listen to nearly any album or single available in the Marketplace library. It's all-inclusive. (Or rather, as you will see, mostly-inclusive.) After two weeks, you must either renew your pass or lose access to any downloaded-but-not-purchased music.

Unfortunately, this 14-day trial is not available to people who simply install Zune Software and want to give it a spin. If you don't own a Zune and want to try out the pass, you're going to have to fork out $14.99 for at least one month to see how you like it. Which you may, or may not.

Is the Zune Pass worth the money? Give it a test. Launch Zune Software, connect up and search for some of your favorite artists. To do this, select marketplace from the navigation pane and type some keywords into the Zune Software search bar. As with iTunes, listings are freely available. You have unlimited access to the store's ...