Every few months a new media player comes along, and every time, without fail, multiple people in the media ask, “Will this be the iPod killer?”  The answer, of course, invariably turns out to be a resounding “no.”  The only way you won’t have heard of the iPod is if you’ve been living in a cave in a remote rainforest somewhere for the past six years, and the Apple-manufactured device has over 90-percent market share in the hard-drive-based music player arena.

There are several reasons why the iPod has been so successful.  The first is fashion – for a long time it was the only game in town for small, svelte media players with large capacities, and thus it caught on with the fashionistas.  Of course, that wouldn’t have done Apple any good if the iPod had been hard to use, but its user interface has been excellent from the beginning, with an easy-to-master menu system and an easy-to-use scroll wheel and button combination.  Finally, the iPod also features vertical integration of a music store, computer-based music collection, and portable player – so you have identical music and playlists on your computer and your iPod, and you can either rip CDs or use the iTunes Music Store to buy tracks online.  It makes for a consistent user experience and means people don’t have to worry about where they get their music and how to keep it synched up.

All the other media player and music store companies have been playing catch up, and by this point Apple has bred something of an unstoppable juggernaut of a media player empire.  Go to New York City or San Francisco and the trademark white headphones will be a common sight on the subway and on the street.  How can anyone usurp the king?

Microsoft thinks it has found a way, and that way is called “Zune.”  Rumors about Zune have been buzzing around for weeks, but the other day Engadget got an insider tip on a significant amount of information about this new platform.

Zune, like the iPod/iTunes empire, will be a vertically-integrated combination of media player, media management software, and music/video store.  It will all be called Zune.  The first players, which are hard drive based and feature several color choices, will begin trickling out later this year, with the bulk of them appearing in 2007.  Microsoft will be doing a huge marketing push, with a viral marketing website, ComingZune.com, that is already live, a Super Bowl ad, and possibly an offer to “buy you out” of iTunes (I presume this means that they’ll give you the songs you’ve bought from iTunes for free).  Microsoft has partnered with accessory makers to ensure that Zune will have a large quantity of accessories available at launch, just like the iPod has.

Okay, but this all sounds very much like the iPod.  Why buy the new guy instead of an established platform?  Well, Zune has a couple of twists on the iPod concept.  For one, it will be geared towards music “discovery.”  The music store will feature comprehensive suggestions for new music based on your current music library, and you will be able to “share” music via WiFi with up to ten close-by friends, who will receive bookmarks to the songs from your player that they listen to so they can buy the music the next time that they log onto the media store.  (They will be able to listen to the songs but won’t be able to copy them from your player.)  The players and service will also feature MySpace-style social networking based on the Xbox Live framework, and there will be a Zune-compatible portable game system in the style of the PSP.

That’s a decent amount of differentiation between the iPod and Zune.  But I still don’t think that this is an “iPod killer.”  For one, things like the social networking features and Xbox Live tie-ins will probably only appeal to a younger demographic.  Secondly, the players will be even more expensive than the already-expensive iPods – the 30 GB Zune players will supposedly sell for $399, as much as a 60 GB iPod.  People aren’t going to think they’re getting a good deal, and the target demographic may have a bit of trouble coughing up that amount of cash (or convincing their parents to). 

The biggest reason I think the iPod will remain king, though, is its immense popularity.  I don’t think it’s a passing fad and all of a sudden Zune players will become fashionable – iPods are so instantly recognizable that people will still treat the white headphones as a status symbol.  And many people are somewhat tied into iPods by the accessories that they own.  All in all, I think the iPod has become so popular that its popularity has become self-perpetuating – and products have to be great and not just good to unseat it.  And I think that Zune is only good.