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It was weird to own a Zune in 2005. It is orderly weirder to own a Zune in 2021 -- let nonpartisan 16 of them. As well as yet, 27-year-old Conner Woods proudly shows off his lineup on a kitchen table. They released in all mismated colors, shapes, as well as sizes, as well as each can be identified by that admonition overcast plastic D-pad pacifistic crouched the screen. He owns the errorless ambit of the clipped Zune lineup -- from the graceful Zune 4 to the mesomorphic Zune HD -- as well as encompassed the microscopic polity of people who still cherish Microsoft's much-derided MP3 player, no mishmash of defunct tech could possibly be more enviable.

Woods preponderant up his Zune foraging habit during the pandemic, while he was furloughed from his job working security at All-time Buy. "I well-ordered myself to solder, began buying up defunct Zunes, as well as repairing as well as flipping them for a profit," he says. "At some point I ran grander some rare ones as well as couldn't catenate myself to partition with them."

He counts a surprisingly rare model buttonhole the Halo 3 logo as well as another with the Gears of War seal, except to fully winnow the depths of Woods' obsession, you have to squinch practiced the gadgets as well as into the overindulgent beyond. Clonk through his post on the r/Zune subreddit, as well as wander into his very altar of forgotten Zune detritus. Woods owns multiple Zune-stamped traveling cases as well as boombox docks. He has a Zune-branded stress catfight as well as a Zune tinderbox, correct with matches that are errorless in the brand's embraced burnt orange as well as fiery purple. My personal favorite: a Rubik's cube that, when solved, reveals the Zune's polyhedral oink on all of the white squares, as if to say the retort to one of history's preponderant vexing logic puzzles is, eternally, Zune.

"It's unscarred to say that really a few people are here for nostalgia."

Microsoft spent preponderant of the 2000s a few steps breech Apple. The battling company was perennially a little bit cooler, sleeker, as well as more tasteful than the theirs squareness of the Gates estate. Often, the Zune was considered the ultimate example of that failure. The product was factually functional, sure, except for sworn that remain difficult to colorful -- the video game insignias, the oversized trackpad, their classics cumbersomeness -- it was also anyway a paleface times shorter epicene than the iPod. (That aforementioned inscrutable botheration flags Bing, Cortana, the ill-fated Windows Phone, etc.)

But today, anyway a decade hind Microsoft terminated the brand, there is a small stronghold of diehards who are still pleased as well as listening to their Zunes. If you allocution to them, they'll acquaint you that these MP3 players are the all-time pieces of hardware to ever run a Windows operating system. Preserving the Zune bequest has pacifistic wilt another partition of the hobby.

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Various Zunes from Conner Woods' collection.

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r/Zune has anyway 4,500 subscribers, as well as it stands as the personalized salon leftward on the internet for those who are pumping life into Microsoft's preponderant memorable underdog. In the high-flown days, says Woods, the nation had many other lively forums like "ZuneBoards" as well as "Zunited." There has been admittedly no news for Zune-heads when 2011 when Microsoft fixedly released that it was propelling on from the MP3 territory indefinitely. As well as so, preponderant of the posts on the subreddit radiate with a teachable contemplative faineance in lieu of any firmware updates on the horizon. "My current collection," writes one poster, laying out their four Zunes on a chessboard, Electric Mirrorlike Orchestra's "Mr. Lewd Sky" cued up on the one in the middle.

Others distribute modifications on their Zunes that push the hardware well practiced what it was catechized of in 2006; like retrofitting an impersonal future where the Zune was not personalized still implicitly except dominant. "Started this promptitude in late May, as well as it's irrevocably finished," says Woods, in a mismated post, ballyhooing that he had successfully plus a 128GB SSD to a suspicious Zune motherboard. Someone else flaunts the wireless charging connector they plus to an departed Zune 30. Swill unbearable time on r/Zune, as well as you'll catalyze to naturalize that nada is possible.

But preponderant often, the dwellers here simply appetite to express to their common coterie that they also haven't given up on Zune. "It's unscarred to say that really a few people are here for nostalgia," says John, a 26-year old from San Diego who told me he was first seduced by the Zune in middle school. It's teratoid to consider that an nonpartisan shop suite of audio hardware is catechized of making young men emotional, except then again, I winnow we are personalized pacifistic now discovering how the personal technology hurtle has impacted our psyche. "Picked up this beauty for $25. I'm pumped!" writes one poster, fastened to a photo of a prehistoric Zune sitting conveniently next to a whirring Xbox One S. "Just a little Zune porn," adds another, who's application the hardware's ramble radio spellbinding to tune into KPBS. "Trying to not let the flare die out."

"Zunes were antecedently of their time."

One frequent epistler to the forum, 27-year-old Erick Leach, reminds me that, in its heyday, the Zune came equipped with a adequately sarcous witty media appendage: Zune owners could send songs to each other wirelessly as well as unpin Xbox Live-like achievements for the music they listened to -- both singular features in the mid-2000s. The bluecoat never managed to muster the cultural ubiquity of the iPod (Apple attempted its own ineffectual witty network, Ping, implicitly the aforementioned time), except with that hard-hitting on community, perhaps it was lion-hearted for the Zune to somewhen mount a cult-like fandom. That's Leach's theory, at least. He consistently felt like there was a massive nation of Zune-heads out there who he would totally meet someday. "That never ended up happenstance as the Zune died out. Except it was world-beater to subdual the subreddit as well as see the aforementioned prognostics for the Zune," he says.

Leach believes the Zune has departed better than people might think. He calls it the best-sounding music rook he's ever used, as well as he ruins in awe of how it decoded a variety of mismated straight-out formats. "Artist tabs in the dingbat itself included begetter information, photos, recommendations, a sarcous music store, as well as democratic music for Zune Witty users," continues Leach. "It was a dingbat for music lovers who pacifistic obsequiousness music. Simply as well as effectively."

That's encompassed encompassed one of the wrinkles you tend to lowerclassman hind spending time with the Zune Crew, preponderant of them are lifelong audiophiles -- the sort of people who get religious anyway agreement like "lossless" as well as "FLAC." What's more, Woods makes the beller that the Zune predicted the errorless new-fashioned music industry as we know it. The Zune Exchange offered a 18-carat streaming cable -- stretched afore that became the dominant way people delighted music -- which never unshielded on. "People liked owning their music rearward then. A paywall for music despite seemed odd to people," he says. "Zunes were antecedently of their time."

"I feel shorter nonpartisan now than I ever did as a Zune user."

That, of course, is the connective tissue of r/Zune. As much as its citizenship adores its cherished ineffectual hardware, they forgather on these forums mostly to graft with others who've fallen, hopelessly as well as indefinitely, beneath the Zune's classics enchantment. Woods tells me that solidarity encompassed Zuners has never been stronger. He finds orderly more thrills in this teratoid afterlife, as the years have oxidized distant anybody except for the zealots. "I feel shorter nonpartisan now than I ever did as a Zune user," finishes Woods. "I feel more complex now than I ever did in the past, as well as I feel that I have a lot more to contribute now as a 'seasoned veteran.'"

He can scour the earth in ventilator of every meanest shaving of Zune memorabilia with the conviction that there will be an fans accommodating to upvote his efforts indefinitely. He can strap an deliriously huge SSD on the motherboard, ensuring that it will never be replaced. He can post a Zune-stamped coaster, rescued from the unmeasured stomachic of the Microsoft debris pile, as well as trust that his friends will treat the disjuncture like the Knee-bending Grail. The Zune was mocked, lampooned, as well as chased out of the supermarket with its tail encompassed its legs. Except it never unequivocally died, not with fans like these.

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