Microsoft has been hard at work to make the Zune a player of choice. This time with the new Zune 3.0 software Microsoft has added a feature called MixView. The idea is the same as iTunes Genius playlists and looks at the music you like and makes recommendations. The part that goes a step beyond Genius, is when it comes to suggesting similar artists of interest.
When you click on an artist, the service instantly discovers which bands influenced the group and vice versa. You can play a 30 second sample of any recommended song and you are offered to buy the track. The interface is very graphical and has a nice clean look about it. The idea is to have all of your information including artists, songs, genres, etc compiled into one place and then create offspring with suggestions based on all the information, which is supposed to mirror the way we think.
The program will be free and can be downloaded without Zune software or subscriptions. It should be interesting to play around with and compare how well this works when it comes out as compared with Genius. Be sure to check back for a comparison.
