In other creepy Zune-related news: not sure how much weight there is behind this, but word on the street is that MS might be building some sort of referral-credit scheme into the Zune, ie: you beam someone a song, they like it, their copy self destructs, they buy it from the Zune store and you get a kickback (Microsoft has looked at something like this before, it seems: discussions around the news have unearthed an MS research paper entitled “Off-line Economies for Digital Media“).

Everyone reporting on this seems to think it’s great idea, but frankly it scares me a bit: imagining for a minute an alternate in which I buy a Zune (and use a download service to purchase music – I like the physicality of CDs, even if all they do these days is take up shelf space), how many grains of salt do I take with music recommendations? What stops this scheme (if it does indeed eventuate) from turning every Zune owner I meet into some kind of potential musical Amway rep?