Microsoft has begun offering an annual pay option for its Zune Pass, after over a year of only offering a monthly option.
The monthly pass was $15 per month but now subscribers can pay for one year upfront for $150.
Ars asked Microsoft for comment: “It went live yesterday in the US, UK, France, Italy and Spain. The monthly subscription is for $14.99 in the US and €9.99 or £8.99 in European markets. The annual Zune Pass subscription is the same monthly offer, at a discounted price of 12 months of music for the price of 10 months.”
The updated Zune Pass subscription option comes right on the heels of the release of Windows Phone 7, which integrates the service.
A Microsoft Zune Pass gives you unlimited access to 10 million songs while you are subscribed whilst also getting to keep 10 songs as free downloads per month.
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The long-anticipated Microsoft Zune HD firmware v4.5 is now available to Zune HD owners, bringing native XviD support to the device as well as streaming Smart DJ.
The player will now has native support for the MPEG-4 Part 2 ASP codec, and the player will playback XviD videos, which is still the codec of choice for most videos downloaded online. The format will play via your HDTV as well if you own the Zune HD Dock.
Smart DJ playlists, a “Genius”-esque song playlist creator, is also available on the player and not just the desktop software. If you are connected via Wi-Fi you will be able to to create Smart DJ playlists that incorporate streamed content from the Zune Marketplace, besides the songs already stored on the player.
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According to Electronista, the Microsoft Zune HD is seeing extremely high sales so far since its launch on Tuesday, with many big retailers already seeing backorders or complete sell outs.
Dell customers have to wait until November for their pre-order Zunes to ship, and dell has even offered another $20 USD off the purchase price to keep people happy.
The 32GB model at Amazon is backordered for 1-3 weeks, and the 16GB model appears to be headed there soon as well.
Best Buy is backordered in both models and Fry’s is completely sold out of the 16GB unit.
However, the official Microsoft store is selling both models with no supply constraints.
You can read our review on the player here: Unboxing the Zune HD and Zune software 4
