Ways the Zune could rock:

- Small/indie bands can embed info into the metadata so once the song gets locked people can still see things like their URL, so people can buy the music directly from the band.

- Show up at location X and get some unreleased tracks from Band Y. Whether it’s at a local gig or a promotional event (Warp Tour, X06, X-Games, etc.)

- My mother-in-law plays in a Blues band and people are always asking for her CD’s at gigs and sometimes she runs out. Instead she could share the tracks and keep the music fresh in their mind. If they have the song still on their Zune, even if locked, it’s a reminder that “Oh, yeah, I liked that, I should go buy their music off their site.”

- Transfer XBox 360 music, videos and downloaded media content to the Zune. I’d honestly never watch a movie on a 3″ screen but I wouldn’t mind showing off the “Gears of War” or “Mass Effect” trailer to my friends.

- Enable profile and game content transfers onto the Zune from the XBox 360. I often go to a friend’s house and want to play the latest demo of some game but some of these demo’s weigh in at 500MB, meaning I don’t want to wait for him to download it and it didn’t fit on my small memory card. I hate lugging my 360′s HD around but if I could dump a game demo onto my Zune and play off of it instead that would rock.

- Wireless kiosk to get new XBox 360 exclusive content. Really fold it into the Live ecosystem.

- Wireless connection in your car. Forget the FM transmitter and its loss of quality or the special cup-holder dock or the dangling cable. Just get in, rock out.

- Wireless streaming party mode. Don’t get it? Imagine being at a party where *everyone’s* Zune was being used in the party mix. One wireless laptop in the corner pulling the music and randomly selecting songs off of anyone’s Zune, or just those tracks that have been tagged with “party”. Imagine the cry’s of “that song was HOT! who was that?” or of course “Seriously? That song? Seriously?”

- 3rd Party Integration. Imagine SlimPlayer, Sonos, anyone that already uses wireless putting out a firmware update that allows that system to pull directly from your Zune.

There are a ton more but I see too many people comparing the Zune to an iPod on little things like hard drive size, colors, lack of a scroll wheel, etc. There is a *huge* amount of things that just the WiFi aspect could bring when wielded by Microsoft. A lot of the suggestions I made can easily work with a cable but sometimes just that extra bit of effort to dock/cable your player is enough to make sure it never gets off the ground. If you can walk into a room and things just *work* you have a winner.