Microsoft is now taking on Apple’s iTune’s Genius feature with it’s Zune 3.0 software called MixView.

This new feature displays a single album, artist or user in the center of the screen and surrounds it with related items in a graphical format. You can start on an artist and instantly discover which bands influenced that artist and vice versa, by mousing over those surrounding elements in MixView. Double-clicking through to any song plays a 30-second sample, offers a chance to buy the track or, if you’re a Zune Pass subscriber, plays the track in its entirety. The same view also shows Zune users who play the artist in heavy rotation and the albums that are associated with an artist. Clicking on any of these elements brings it to the center of the screen and reconfigures the relationships with new elements.

Even if you don’t have a new Zune or a subscriber to Zune Pass, MixView and the other elements of the Zune 3 software could be reason enough to try it out as your media player (Windows only). The free application will apply MixView to MP3s ripped from CDs, downloaded via bit torrent and so on. So even if you don’t plan on subscribing with a Zune Pass which is $15 per month, this feature could still be useful to music lovers everywhere.

Some say that Zune’s music recommendation interface is far more evolved than Apple’s Genius, but the question is whether that matters, given that so many more people use iTunes. There are also rumors that Microsoft plans to rehabilitate its 14-day free Zune subscription trial for users who want a taste of this service.So it looks like we can always take a look and try it out and then we can later on decide if we want to trade your beloved iPhone and iTunes for a single new feature.