We recently found out that just over 2 million Zunes have been sold since the device’s launch on November 14 2007. That means about 125,000 Zunes have been sold each month. It sounds pretty good to me but what do you think?

I love Zunited, if only because they know how to break open the Zune software like an egg and pour out its sweet sweet contents all over the internet. They’ve discovered two Zunes that haven’t been released yet or announced. The first is a black Zune 80 with a black metal back (rather then the silver). My guess is this is going to be the Joy Division Zune.

The second Zune is far more interesting. It is the Red/Black Zune, it is clearly a flash device and that is everything we know. Ohh wait we know one more thing… IT IS AWESOME!

Hopefully we will hear something about it soon…

Colbert was giving some advice to Bush to help McCain win the election. The Zune part is about 4 min in.

Any thoughts?

I’ve been doing some exploring and it appears from my initial investigation that there are currently a total of 9 badges that can be obtained on the Zune social and displayed on your Zune card. There are additional badges that relate to the Zune.net Forums but I’m unsure of those exist beyond the forums. Three of the badges are related to artist plays and three are related to album plays, the remaining 3 badges are related to being helpful in the Zune.net forums.

Bronze Album Power Listener Badge, 50 track plays from one album

Silver Album Power Listener Badge, 250 track plays from one album

Gold Album Power Listener Badge, 500 track play from one album

Bronze Artist Power Listener Badge, 50 plays from any one artist

Silver Artist Power Listener Badge, 250 plays from one artist

Gold Artist Power Listener Badge, 500 plays from one artist

These are the community badges. You can find the remaining badges here.

I’m updating my Zune software as I type this.

While the Zune Social will continue to be in beta, a significant number of improvements have been developed for your social-ing pleasure. There will be tighter integration between the Zune software client and the Zune social. The update will allow you to see what your friends are listening to and download that content right from the Zune software, rather then playing hop-scotch between windows.

Probably the coolest improvement you will see is that your Zune card will now exist right on your device. Additionally, if you have the Zune pass, you will be able to opt-into getting all your friends favorite tracks, recent downloads and other popular tracks downloaded to your computer and your device automatically. I’m unbelievable excited about this feature. Up until now, the Zune social experience has been a little two dimensional. While you could see the tracks your friends were enjoying, there was no system in place for getting those tracks onto your Zune.

The update will also give you a new way to show how much of a super fan you are. This update is going to activate a new achievement badges. You can get achievements for listening to a certain number of tracks by an artist or album. This is just one of the new ways Zune social members will be able to find other users who share similar musical tastes. Additionally there will be achievements for helping fellow Zune users in the Zune forums.

On top of everything else there will be some significant changes to how your music is represented on the Zune card. The redesigned Zune card will represent your music as more of a collage of hip (or not) then a cover-flow like line up of album art. Additionally the search has been dramatically improved. You will be able to add searchable information about yourself like your location and name.

Zune Reputation Badges is probably the Zune social feature I’m most excited about. While the social has always broadcasted your plays and tracked how many times you’ve listened to a certain artist, you will now be getting some recognition for those bands you truly worship. 100 listens will get you a Bronz Power Listener Badge, 500 will get you a Silver Power Listener Badge and 1000 will get you a Gold Power Listener Badge. All this will be displayed on your Zune card and in the “chatter” section of your friends Zune social pages.

The big change on ZMP is something we’ve been waiting for since v1 launch, VIDEOS on the Marketplace. A ton of content from Adult Swim, Comedy Central, Sci-fi network and many others will be available. Ohh and by the way… there is a bunch of NBC content which you can’t find over at iTunes. I’ll be able to get my HEREOS fix on the road…legally that is. Pricing for the video content will be similar with Xbox Live and will not be part of your subscription package.

The look of the marketplace is also being slightly updated. The improved look gives artists even more say in the way they are represented. Unlike iTunes spreadsheet-like appearance, Zune marketplace will continue to represent artist pages the way the artists would want.

Version 2.5 of the Zune software will be out in a few hours and ohh how far we’ve come from the original v1 platform. Several major improvements have been made in the software’s look and feel and several much needed features have been added. The first, and probably most needed feature is the addition of an auto playlist feature. While similar to the autoplaylist from the v1 software, v2.5 software allows you to arrange the songs in either random order or based on another criteria.

Another big feature that Zune software now possesses is the ability to edit metadata. In the past versions of the Zune software, editing metadata was either A. impossible or B. difficult. There are two ways of editing metadata in 2.5. The first is the old fashioned way; right click (editors note: *boring*) and then choose the edit option. The slick-new-way involves dragging and dropping songs into albums, albums into other albums ect ect. It is really something you have to play with to fully appreciate. Lets say, for whatever reason some songs off the same album are showing up as being in two separate albums. Rather then going in and editing the metadata you can simply drag the tracks into the album you want. Wham-bam your metadata is changed (also you look really cool).

And just in case that wasn’t enough for you… they’ve added/changed the backgrounds available in the software. From what I’ve seen so far the new ones are really cool.

Apparently Zune is hosting a media event (my invite must have been lost in the mail) and Chris Stephenson (GM of Zune Marketing) said that they are finding ways of integrating the Zune into the Sidekick. So there you have it the Danger’s developing the software end of the Zune for phones.