For some reason, Press Pause, the weekly video game web show I co-host with Carlos Rodela, is not listed in the Zune Marketplace. You can get it on iTunes here. You can subscribe to it in the Zune software by adding the RSS feed. But we want to be listed in the excellent Zune Marketplace, and for some reason it’s not there.

So, I need your help to submit it. If they get enough submissions, they’ll add it. Just follow these three steps.

1. Go to the Zune podcast page on the web. Any browser should work fine.

2. Click the bright “Submit a Podcast” button on the left-hand side.

3. In the dialog box that pops up, enter the following URL and click “Submit”: http://mevio.com/feeds/presspause.xml

That’s it! Thanks for all your help! And to show you that this wasn’t just a complete waste of your time…hey, you’re already at this neat Zune podcast directory thing on the web. Did you check it out a bit? You might want to. You can stream any podcast in the Zune marketplace (which is really big) right on the web page. Free. That includes audio and video podcasts. And you don’t need to have a Zune account, or to sign up for anything, or enter in some arcane RSS feed, or any of that stuff. It’s just a big, totally free podcast playback machine on the web. Neat, huh?

Update: Looks like we’re listed now. Thanks to everyone who submitted.

“If you want a portable player primarily for media, the Zune HD trounces the iPod Touch. Music, video, and podcast offerings are similar, but the Zune has FM and HD radio, marginally better sound quality, 720p video output, the optional Zune Pass subscription service for music, and an honest-to-goodness superior interface. The software on both desktop and device is designed to be vastly better for discovering new music. If you want a pocket computer to run apps and play games, with music and video playing as a second-tier function, the incredibly robust App Store on the iPod Touch make it still the obvious choice.”

Zune Pass is magically awesome. $15 a month gets you all the music you want. Obviously it has DRM so that it expires when you stop subscribing. Otherwise you’d just subscribe for one month, download thousands of songs, and quit, laughing all the way to the bank. But for that $15 a month, you also get 10 song credits you can use to download 10 totally DRM-free songs you can keep forever. And believe me, when you can download and listen to as many tracks as you want, you’ll easily find way more than 10 songs you want to keep a month. This, combined with the software’s new Smart DJ feature, will introduce you to lots of awesome new music you don’t have and let you quickly, easily, and legally download it.

Seriously Microsoft, it’s time. The iron has never been hotter, so to speak. The stars are aligned. And other clichéd turns of phrase. You have the right device, the right momentum, and the right opening to establish to the Mac crowd that, yes, Microsoft is indeed capable of making great software and sexy devices that have great features and are easy to use.

First, the Zune HD is hot. It has the gadget and tech community excited. Gizmodo loves it, calls it the best PMP on the market, and says “It’s got the most unique vision, the most impressive hardware and the most stylish software.” The new iPod announcements from Apple are nice, but they didn’t “wow” the press. That’s not going to last, so Microsoft should do something dramatic while the tide is in its favor.

Second, the Zune 4.0 desktop software is at a place where it’s honestly a better way to organize, find, and listen to/watch your media than iTunes is. I mean, go to the main music landing page in iTunes 9 and it looks like this:

The iTunes 9 music landing page is a bit cluttered

Compare that to the main music landing page in Zune 4.0:

The Zune 4.0 music landing page is clean and organized

By comparison, iTunes is cluttered and full of interface no-nos like mixing vertical and horizontal scroll bars, unaligned major elements, and so on. Main artist pages are even worse, compared the the Zune stuff.

When you’re listening to music, iTunes doesn’t really show you anything. The best you can do is enable the visualizer, which is certainly quite pretty. It’s not every useful, though.

iTunes gives you a visualizer that is slick, but not useful

Compare that to the Zune now playing, which pans beautiful hi-res artist artwork, nifty scrolling stats, and gives you access to the list of stuff you’re currently playing (it fades away when you stop interacting with the software for a few seconds).

The Zune 4.0 Now Playing screen combines attractive art/animation with useful controls.

Zune 4.0’s “Smart DJ” feature is about as useful as the Genius stuff on iTunes. I prefer Smart DJ because, if you have a Zune Pass, it can optionally stream in songs from the marketplace, while Genius is limited to stuff in your collection. In fact, you can Smart DJ any artist you’re browsing in the marketplace without even having any of their music.  But even if you don’t have the $15-a-month Zune Pass, the Smart DJ gives you the option of turning the software’s mix into a playlist, and even auto-refresh the playlist every X days (you can adjust it per-playlist).

Apple has continued to avoid giving iTunes users a subscription option like Zune or Rhapsody. Of course this isn’t for everyone, but there are those that really like it, and I constantly see comments from Mac users that they’d love the option.

Importantly, compatibility with users’ existing iTunes stuff isn’t the barrier it used to be. Both iTunes and Zune have moved most of its “purchased” content to DRM-free MP3, or at least AAC (which the Zune software and hardware plays just fine). The Zune software and hardware plays MP4 video, too.

So I’m making a list, out of curiosity. After the jump you’ll find some of the albums they don’t have on the Zune marketplace, but do have on iTunes. Sometimes the album and tracks are in the database, just unavailable for purchase/download.

Help me make my list, won’t you? Post in the comments some of the songs or albums you can’t find available in the Zune marketplace. (If you’d like to play along but don’t have the Zune software, just go download it. It’s free.) I just started. What follows is a partial list, by no means complete, just some of the first things I found. But I figured I’d solicit some help before I got too far along.

Not in the Zune Marketplace, but in iTunes:

Halo 1, 2, or 3 soundtracks. (seriously…Halo)

Miley Cyrus – Party in the U.S.A. (uh, barf…but it’s #3 on the Billboard Hot 100)

Nothing from Blizzard’s game soundtracks – no World of Warcraft or Starcraft

Assassin’s Creed soundtrack ( they have The Chosen hip-hop single, but not the full soundtrack)

Street Fighter 4 soundtrack

King of Kong  movie soundtrack

Grand Theft Auto IV soundtrack (not Vladivostok FM, which they do have)

Update:

I kind of gave up on this. I spent several hours looking for things, and I found a few (Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers self-titled 1976 debut album, The Raconteurs – Broken Boy Soldiers), but for the most part I found that if it appeared iTunes has something that Zune Marketplace did not, it was because Zune has the re-release a year or two later.

iTunes definitely has considerably more tracks, but given the propensity of the music industry to re-release and re-master and issue compilations and stuff, you don’t actually miss out on that much stuff on Zune. I wish they’d shore up their video game soundtrack selection, especially given how buddy-buddy Zune and Xbox are. And the Halo thing is still terribly embarrassing.

Rather, the interesting bit is that they’re streaming audio podcasts directly from the web. No Zune required. No Zune PC software required. No login required. Just go to the site, find the podcast you want to hear, and hit the play button. For instance, here’s one of my favorites, The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe. There’s nothing to download. Yes, it works in Firefox (I didn’t even try it in IE, for that matter).

This is in contrast to the music, which you have to be signed in (and maybe a Zune subscriber?) to listen to. For instance, if you follow this link to 21st Century Breakdown, the Play buttons don’t work unless you sign in.

I think that’s pretty cool. The Zune marketplace has a pretty good library of video and audio podcasts, and it’s growing steadily. The ability to instantly and easily play any audio podcast right from the web is, frankly, a nice handout from the Zune folks. They could have easily put this behind a wall to, as marketing likes to say, “add value” to the Zune Pass or some such nonsense. Apple requires you to access its podcast directory, and for that matter its music directory, through iTunes. But podcasts are out there all over the place for free. A tip of the hat for getting this one right, guys. Are you paying attention, Apple?