Microsoft released a press release this morning with details on its Zune portable media player and the complementary Zune Marketplace store.

The Zune will be released on November 14th and will have a price tage of $249. Price is key, but I'm more interested in the preloaded content and specifics about the Zune Marketplace. The preloaded content is heavily slanted toward indies like Sub Pop (Band of Horses, CSS, Chad VanGaalen), Astralwerks (Small Sins, Darkel) and V2 (The Adored, The Rakes). The device will come stocked with nine tracks, 12 videos and three film shorts. That's about $25 worth of content. Few, I suspect, will take that into account when assessing the price of the Zune -- but free content never hurts.

The Zune Pass, a subscription service akin to Rhapsody and Napster To Go, will cost $14.99 per month. That's a standard price for a subscription. Individual tracks will cost 79 "Microsoft Points" each. While I'm personally not a fan of prepaid accounts (I would prefer to have each purchase charged against my credit card), a post at Joystiq sings the praises of Microsoft Points as used for Xbox purchases. Joystiq wrote that one US dollar buys 80 points (which means each song at the Zune Marketplace would cost a fraction of a cent more than $0.99) and the Xbox marketplace "makes spending so much easier than any other shopping experience most of us have ever experienced."

Engadget already has a post on the press release, so stop by and read the always entertaining comments.