Zune’s 3 play rule gets hacked

Posted by Chris Leckness on 12/9/07

Wow. This is painfully obvious. I don't know if I would call it a hack though. More of a workaround. I am quite sure Microsoft will come with a workaround of their own soon too. Anyhow, here is a way to get around the 3 play song sharing restriction.

This is a bit of forehead slapper if you ask me. We thank the Zune team for ridding the wretched three day play rule, but they left the three play rule and that makes us cringe. Thankfully Zune Scene has figured out how to get around that, but this should only be used for tracks that you produce yourself or tracks from your musician-type friends. *wink* You simply need to change the genre tag for your files to â€˜podcastâ€™ and voila. Have fun and enjoy your unlocked tracks.

Source: Crunchgear

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6 Responses for "Zune’s 3 play rule gets hacked"

Antonio December 9th, 2007 at 8:24 pm 1
very cool. So simple even i should’ve thought of that.

thanks.
sinizter December 9th, 2007 at 9:02 pm 2
HAHA. Nice.

Unfortunately, every song in a person’s collection would have the genre "Podcast". Personally, I think that’d bother me. For others, who knows.

Nevertheless, nice workaround.
Matt December 9th, 2007 at 11:06 pm 3
Finally, an answer to the 3 play limit… If microsoft doesnt do anything about this problem, and it turns out to have a positive affect I think it could prove to microsoft they need to finally kill the 3 play limit… And btw, I signed up for this site but how long does it take for me 2 get my password?
doogald December 10th, 2007 at 9:30 am 4
Oh, my.Here’s a little bug that I am sure will be patched. But, how would you do so?Maybe they’ll need to come up with another way to tag "real" podcasts. Well, another solution would be to disable the 3 play limit but transcode shared files on the fly down to really low bitrates. Not sure if the hardware would be up to that task, though …
kaseyart December 10th, 2007 at 9:43 am 5
I never understood the 3 play rule.Â Glad this was figured out. Now when I get a Zune I will use it.Thanks for the post!
sinizter December 10th, 2007 at 8:29 pm 6
Microsoft had to have forseen people trying to get around the 3-share limit.

I guess they implement it for copyright reasons…although having limited sharing is kind of useless. It normally takes a while for me to fully appreciate a song, especially if I’m listening to an entire album. Having 3 plays definitely wouldn’t be sufficient for me.