This really isn’t a shock for anyone who has used Microsoft early revision software. Look at IE, look at Windows 98, look at Visual Basic, look at the xbox, etc… Microsoft products get better the higher the revision gets, bloated but functional. I expect next revision of the Zune will be considerably better than this one… although, that doesn’t help the early adopters much.
— Shadus    Nov 16, 07:01 AM    #

I don’t think this is a problem with the Zune device. Microsoft had problems with file copy before this. Copy any large amount of files from desktop to server and you will find that there are files missing. This is why people use XCOPY and robocopy.
— Twon    Nov 16, 08:12 AM    #

You've probably done this already, but just to make sure, check your import settings in iTunes to make sure its ripping to MP3 and not AAC/MP4.

Other than that, no ideas whats going on.
— Michael O'Hare    Nov 16, 08:19 AM    #

Ah, you picked a Microsoft product…the Yugo of the software industry. Someday, Gates, will hire some C- students to replace his existing cadre of D programmers. Good luck.
— Da Coyote    Nov 16, 08:36 AM    #

Return it and get an iPod like you should have done in the first place.
— hahahahaha    Nov 16, 08:39 AM    #

refund and get an ipod for crying out loud. microsoft had five years to come up with this? this is the most hideous product launch since the edsel imho.

good luck. you are going to need it.
— timtimes    Nov 16, 09:39 AM    #

Maybe its microsoft’s take on the whole “shuffle” idea. It randomly imports a subset of songs from the list that you explicitly tell it to. Its the future!!
— John Allen    Nov 16, 09:52 AM    #

No variable bit rate encoding support in the Zune software. It says this all of the place in the zune documentation. Check your "ABBA" mp3s. I bet they were encoded with variable bit rate.
— Apotropaic    Nov 16, 09:59 AM    #

I think you should try a cd thats not ABBA. zune doesn’t like bad music.
— Andrew    Nov 16, 10:41 AM    #

Michael O’Hare, these are all MP3s

Apostropaic, these are not all variable bit rate. Some are, but most are 192Kbps ripped using iTunes

Andrew, I only talked about the ABBA, becuase Zune found 1 ABBA song, but ignored 14 others. Zune, however, completely ignored AC/DC, Ennio Morricone, Metallica, and The Beatles. So by your logic, Zune likes ABBA's "Hasta Manana" more than it likes AC/DC's "Back in Black" ... now THAT'S a software bug.
— Aran    Nov 16, 11:00 AM    #

Try checking the naming convention… People to this day think ,-)(* etc are valid for file names.
— LoK    Nov 16, 11:05 AM    #

i have a similar problem using Yahoo Musicmatch software
— jamie    Nov 16, 11:07 AM    #

Try copying one of the folders elsewhere, and use a third party application to strip them of the ID3 info one field at a time. If at some point it works, youll know its the ID3 tags and what field is preventing them from being imported, then you can remove the said ID3 fields from all the files.

IF its the ID3 info that is.
— Michael O'Hare    Nov 16, 11:10 AM    #

Microsoft has not yet paid off the record labels for those songs that are not showing up. I take it that the ones that are showing up are under the Universal Music Group?
— Nick Dynice    Nov 16, 12:26 PM    #

unless you have nothing better to do with your life get an ipod and put the stupid zune on ebay
— richard    Nov 16, 01:22 PM    #

Luckily, I didn't buy the Zune player. I just downloaded the free Zune software which I was hoping would replace iTunes 7 which is extremely slow on my computer.
— Aran    Nov 16, 03:09 PM    #

Not surprising to me. When I tried to import with Windows Media Player once, it only imported about 600 of my 4700 songs, 60% of which were I encoded myself with LAME. Couldn’t for the life of me get it to recognize the others.
— non_zero    Nov 16, 03:09 PM    #

Andrew: ABBA is the single best pop group of the 70's. Don't you be talking smack here now.
— name    Nov 16, 04:49 PM    #

I think a few of the commentors have hit the nail on the head. Avoid being an early adopter to a microsoft product, as they always seem to have a multitude of problems upon release.
— Sportsseo    Nov 16, 05:21 PM    #

iPod killer indeed!
— dave    Nov 17, 03:32 AM    #

No VBR support? That is just piss-poor coding. Flat-out pathetic if you ask me.

Apple had a good bit of time to develop the first generation of ipod on the mac only (win versions came later) – so they obviously benefited from the whole “cult of mac”. Microsoft on the other hand is such an easy target people go straight for the throat. And they should, Microsoft sucks – but Apple isn’t flawless and iTunes 7 is a Microsoft-esque resource hog. I feel like I’m running windows everytime I open iTunes on my Mac and I have to wait a year for my 14,000+ songs and artwork to load.
— huh    Nov 17, 08:14 AM    #

Same thing happened to me. Are the missing files marked System and Hidden? If so, Zune/Media Player will not add them to the library. I removed the System and Hidden attributes from the “missing” files and, ta da…they’re were added successfully.
— Rick    Dec 17, 08:36 AM    #

I recently bought a zune and was having the same problem not importing all my music. I was able to add my music by compressing it with winrar and extracting it. Zune finally imported all my music. I think that updating the time stamp of the file is what allowed the zune software to import all my music to the library.
— ISA    Dec 17, 09:22 PM    #

no problems at all, i'm loving my zune!
— adrian    Dec 26, 01:33 AM    #

I had the same problem. I suspect this problem has to do with copyright issues. When the Zune software imported my music library, it seemed to skip artists from major record lables, e.g. the beatles, the beastie boys, etc. Very suspect. However, it was easy to fix the problem simply by dragging and dropping my music folder onto the zune library window. After that, everything showed up.

By the way, the Zune supports VBR. Almost all of my music collection is VBR mp3 that I ripped with LAME and I’ve had no problems other than the dodgy library behavior.

— ben    Dec 27, 02:07 PM    #

i just bought the old zune and i installed all of the software and only like 100 of my 3000 songs went to the zune software! wtf is up with that?

— jac    Feb 6, 05:05 PM    #

Maybe I have found the solution. I had the same problem with my Zune 2.0 (80 GB), Zune software Version 2.5.447.0. There was a problem with ALBUM tag – if it has a dot ( i.e. “.” ) inside, Zune cannot synchronize such file … I have corrected my tags, it seems everything works great now.

— cyril    Aug 25, 02:43 PM    #

My zune is making me crazy. At least I didn’t buy it, it was a gift. It seems that if I want a song on it, it should be there, not picked over by the software. It smacks of 1984. By the by, ABBA rocks.

— Cindyloo    Oct 26, 09:59 AM    #

While I have had NUMEROUS problems with my Zune this one was the most recent. I found a fix, which may work for you. Get rid of all ID3 info, I use winamp so I just go to ‘view file info’ on the song. Clear all metadata, unselect any ID3 info. Rename the song. Make sure it is in the folder where it can detect it. That may do the trick, it worked on the some odd 20 songs out of 1000 I had that the Zune would not recognize (and with about half of them it would say it was an invalid file).

You will probably have to find a better way to do this though. 20 songs is a chore. Hundreds is ridiculous.

Next time around I am buying an iPod with all the troubles my Zune has given me (this problem was refreshingly the easiest to resolve and figure out).

I hope this helps! People really shouldn’t have to go through all this junk to use the product they purchased!

— sillyiggy    Nov 29, 04:01 AM    #