We have done many posts about where on the net to get free Zune music. This post is a little different. This time we are going to show you how to get free music for your Zune from offline sources - namely any CD you can grab a-hold of!

Before you do anything else, open your Zune media player and make sure the rip settings are as follows:

Then:

1) Grab the CD music you love (and have borrowed from your best mate) and insert it in your computer’s  CD tray.

2) Your Zune desktop media player will auto-detect the CD and the album screen will appear - and will auto rip the songs in the album. If you want to select songs and not the whole album, simply click “cancel rip”.

3. To choose the songs in the CD, tick the songs you want and then click the Start Rip button.

Zune begins to rip the CD.

In a few minutes, your music is copied to your library, and you can remove the CD from your PC. The next time you sync, the newly ripped songs get copied onto your Zune. Now you can enjoy your music anytime, both on your Zune and your PC.

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Zune are going all out to get Zuners on board with their Zune music store. And to help us get motiviated (any that aren’t already!) , To win a Zune HD (valued at ) and a year of free music, all we have to do is:

The Zune give away ends February 15, 2010 - so get your free trial asap! The free trial lets you try out the Zune pass and see just how cool it is. With a Zune Pass  you can stream and download as much music as you want (but you can’t keep any of it on the free trial).

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A lot of Zune owners do not realize that they can get neat free stuff from iTunes. There are a lot of great free stuff available through the iTunes store - podcasts, for example. Also, a lot of music websites provide free music - but they auto download to iTunes. Not a problem as we will explain below.

First, you have to understand that the Zune supports AAC.  This is also the default file format used by iTunes when you rip a CD.  In other words, both Zune and iTunes use the AAC file format (though iTunes does use other formats as well - eg MP3).  So if you have a collection of music already in iTunes and have just been given a Zune - rest assured that you can play them on your Zune!

To show you how easy is is to get iTunes music onto your Zune we will go through a simple example.  Lets go to Soundclick where there are thousands of songs offered under creative commons license (and so, free to us):

There are literally hundreds of thousands of songs available across 17 different genres for us to download to our Zunes for free. For example, if you love the Latin genre there are over 2500 free Latin-genre songs that can be downloaded to your Zune! The trick is to know how to do it! First, Look at the long list of songs available. Choose one and then click through to the3 download page:

When you click on “download” you will get a box opening that gives you the option to open with iTunes. Select that option:

And voila! It will now be in your iTunes libarary:

When you install the Zune software, it automatically scans and adds songs from the iTunes folder. The Wowzune team recommends that you always rip your CDs in iTunes so they’ll work on all your music players (including your iPod/iPhone). You don’t have to do anything special - just rip them in iTunes, and the Zune software discovers them the next time you start it up.

The only problem comes when you try to play DRM-protected songs  as are all the songs that are purchased from the iTunes Music Store. Zune can’t play those songs!  (OK, there is a way to strip the DRM off by burning to CD and then re-ripping). But if most of the music you have stored there has been ripped from your offline CD collection, or from various sites around the web, then these will not be DRM protected and you will be able to play them on your Zune.

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Fans of Lady Gaga, Sixpence, none the Richer, Tori Amos and/or Big Bad Voodoo Daddy?? Well, here is your chance to grab a free MP3 for your Zune by one of these great artists (and others) because Amazon is giving away a free MP3 a day till Christmas (actually, they are up to day 17 today!)

Just follow our link to see all the MP3s they are giving away. Now these are Christmas songs - so you might be thinking its not worth  getting one of these free Zune downloads.

But hang on a sec, just check them out! The Zune team reckon these are pretty good singles and definitely worth adding to our song list.

Want some more traditional Christmas music? Check out these freebies as well:- Andrea Bocelli’s and Mary J. Blige’s duet of “What Child Is This” and Sugarland’s “Silent Night” from Oprah,  for free!  But you will have to wait till Dec 23 to get them!

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Here is some free software that will interest all those who both love to get free music for their Zune and also love to go looking for it!

Music MP3 allows us to search social websites for FREE MP3 music and legally download them.

Cool hey!

Whats more, the developers reckon that there are more than 110 million MP3 songs out there just waiting for us to find them and legally download them!

The software shows us the most popular music around and also tells us about the latest songs added to the web “recently”.

It also lets us listen online before we decide to download any music.

Whilst there is a Pro version that costs $$, there is no need to get that as there is also a cool free version for downloading as well.

As always, use share below to spread the good news to your friends.

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Last year Zune  partied it up at the 2008 Latin Grammy Awards. The Awards event was  fantastic - as this summary video produced the The Latin Recording Academy demonstrates so well:

With the nominations for the 2009 Latin Grammy Awards recently announced, and the Awards only weeks away, we wondered what part Zune would be playing in the festivites? Of course, since the last awards, Zune has partnered with Univision - perhaps they will simply participate vicariously through Univision? There is nothing on Zune, or Microsoft or even Univision to suggest that Zune will be partying along this year, but we will keep you updated. However, The 10th Annual Latin GRAMMY Awards, set for Nov. 5 at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas, will be broadcast live on the Univision Network from 8–11 p.m. ET/PT (7 p.m. Central).

In the meantime, the Latin Grammy Street Parties have begun! The street parties aim to get local communities across North America to sing and dance Latin American style, culminating in the 10th Annual Latin Grammy awards on November 5th, 2009.  Id you want to join in, you can check out the schedule at LatinGrammy.com

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Whenever a music artist puts out a new album, there is the chance that there will be a free MP3 on offer to promote it. We have posted about some of these on WowZune in the past. And as we all like to follow the latest news on our fav bands etc, its easy enough to grab these while they are available (often for only a very short time)

What is more difficult, is to knowing when other free MP3s that we might like, get offered. That’s when its handy to have a list of sites that specialize in offering free MP3s that mean free music for our Zunes.

We posted about one last week. And DLTunes is another one. Again, they just want us to join their site - and this just takes our email address. In return we get 10 free MP3s to download. AND, you can check if its your kind of music, first - as they publish their current list for us to see before we decide to sign up. Artists in the current list include: Kurd Maverick, Patrick la Funk, Martin Heyder, Gold Ryan & Tapesh, Norman Zube, Lars Sommerfeld and others.

And, if these are not your style of music, then  share this post with any friends you know who would love to have these MP3s for free. We want to support any site that hands out good free music!!

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Wowzune has already posted stacks of ways to get  free Zune Music - and here is another one! Sign up at shockhound.com - its free - and get free MP3s from their artists.

For example, we can get free MP3s from The Architects’ various albums including their latest album The HardWay , and two of their previous albums: Daddy Wore Black and  Revenge.

Browse around the site for other music you like to find more free MP3s to download to Zune!

Remember, you can send this post to your friends by simply clicking the “share” button below and selecting “email”!

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Apple are super aggressive in the market place and have done everything they can to reduce or eliminate competition. The “friendly” ads they run with PC (ie Microsoft) as the butt of their jokes are just the mild tip of the iceberg (we have done several blog posts about this in the past - this post, for example)

A recent addition to the Zune site shows us just why Apple is so determined to keep the MP3 market for itself - if it can. Just check out the following image and video to see just how much big bucks are involved here:

Zune have worked out that anyone that goes for the “buy each and every MP3″ way of getting music is going to have to spend a small fortune - even if they only fill up a small % of their MP3s GB!

Now this comes as no surprise to the Wowzune team as we have pointed this out in many blog posts in the past as we have reviewed lots of different ways to get free, or almost free, music - which BTW, also beat the Zune Pass deal). But its good to see it set out like this (just click the image to see more comparisons done).

In fact, we thought it would be fun to put the two recent “throwing down of the gauntlet” ads by these two IT giants. The first offering is from Zune and so (typically?) more serious in its approach. But the content is deadly for Apple iTunes.

The second continues Apple’s amusing  ridicule of “PC”. Less obviously damaging - but Apple aims to destroy the credibility of anything Microsoft - including Zune.

Well - while these guys are busy fighting, we suggest you take a look around our blog and check out the many alternatives to both Apple iTunes and Zune Marketplace before you even think of spending anything! You will be surprised just how much legal free music, videos and other downloads are out there and cheaper membership deals as well!

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In the previous post we provided links to some pretty good free music for Zune - and movies, TV shows etc. But we have since worked out how to more than double the amount of free music we can get from one of the sites. So are going to take you through how to do this.

First up, you still have to go to the site - link. Then, when the site opens, scroll down the page till you get to the bottom. There you will find a link to “free music downloads“. Click on that link and you will be taken to a page that offers you the opportunity to download a free music toolbar. We wanted to check out what this was about and report back in a blog post. But we were sure surprised when we downloaded the tool bar and found:

This is the same “free trial”offer that we linked you to in our previous post. But if we download the free toolbar then we get to keep 50 free songs - all our own choice and all ours to keep, even if we simply end the free trial (its only 25 free songs if we do the free trial without downloading the toolbar). In addition, to our surprise and delight, we found ….

…that we can potentially have another 365 songs for free. That’s because each day, we are offered a free MP3 to download and keep. Now, unlike to 50 freebies we refer to above,  these songs are not of our own choosing - they are selected for us by the “expert editorial staff (that) hand picks a fresh track every day for you. Totally Free!”

To be honest, we downloaded the free toolbar three days ago and have not so far wanted any of the free MP3s offered - but hey, there are another 362 free MP3s on offer. Bound to want some of them. And we also really like the free radio we discovered that can access from the tool bar! We recommend you check this out.

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