Kurt Shintaku's Blog

I suppose this shouldn’t surprise me per se however when I stumbled upon this, I was so awestuck that it compelled me to write a post about it.

If you like comedy, having a media player like a Zune is a great way to always have new content on your device to listen to.  Until now, one of my favorite means of getting that comedy fix was to subscribe to the ROFL podcast RSS feed at http://revision3.com/rofl/feed/wmv-large/, which meant every week I’d get another 15 minutes of “short attention span theatre” comedy on my Zune.

ENTER:  THE ZUNE COMEDY PLAYLISTS
Little did I know that not just music but also comedy bits were available for download on Zune.  There are custom playlists that are published on Zune Marketplace for people to view, listen, and even subscribe to.  These playlists are simply lists of tracks taken from various comedy albums.  In this case, one playlist called “Comedy Collection” is a selection of 86 of the Zune community’s favorite comedy bits from various comedians available on Zune Marketplace.

Now, if you have ZunePass – ALL OF THESE ARE DOWNLOADABLE/LISTENABLE FOR FREE. 

1. Simply select the playlist “Comedy Collection” from within the Zune client and click on the SUBSCRIBE button. 
2. You’re done. 

All 86 tracks of the content will download to your PC and sync with your Zune if you’d like at no cost to you.  Adam Sandler, Carlos Mencia, Cheech & Chong, Chris Rock, Christopher Titus, Dane Cook, Dave Attell, Billy Connolly, Eddie Izzard, Demetri Martin, Lenny Bruce, Jerry Seinfeld, Kathleen Madigan, Lewis Black, Frank Caliendo, etc.

There’s also another playlist called “Zune Tune Playlist #4:  Favorite Comedy”.  Same thing… if you have ZunePass.  32 tracks from Denis Leary, Mitch Hedberg, Monty Python, Patotn Oswalt, Jimmy Fallon, George Carlin, Bill Engvall, Joe Rogan, etc.

Take a look at the playlists available on Zune Marketplace now:
http://social.zune.net/music/playlists/genre/comedySpokenWord

WHERE DO THESE BITS COME FROM?
But it gets better.  Each of these is a list of bits that are a single track from entire albums.  If you like a comedian, simply follow the track selection from the list, back to the album it came from and WALLA.  You can download the ENTIRE COMEDY ALBUM AT NO CHARGE.

Since discovering this ability, I’ve downloaded the following albums at no charge through my subscription ZunePass, and it just boggles my mind because I doubt I would have bought these otherwise:

1. Eddie Izzard’s “Dress to Kill”
2. Denis Leary’s “No Cure for Cancer”
3. George Lopez’s “America’s Mexican”
4. Jerry Seinfeld’s “I’m Telling you for the Last Time”
5. George Carlin’s “Class Clown”
6. Chris Rock’s “Bigger & Blacker”
7. Christopher Titus’ “Normal Rockwell is Bleeding”
8. Adam Sandler’s “Shhh… Don’t Tell”
9. Lewis Black’s “The Carnegie Hall Performance”
10. Mitch Hedberg’s “Mitch All Together”
11. Richard Belzer’s “Another Lone Nut”
12. Robin William’s “Night at the Met”
13. Sarah Silverman’s “Jesus is Magic”
14. Triumph the Insult Comic Dog’s, “Come Poop With Me”
15. Ron White’s “Tater Salad”