The Wall Street Journal has an article today saying that Microsoft's Zune "falls off sales pace" for media players.

The one piece of evidence? That the Zune is not on Amazon.com's top 10 list for electronics yesterday.

That seems a little sketchy to me. After all, Zune is supposed to be selling at 30,000 retail locations, and to say that sales are off because of what one of them reports (yes, a big one, I admit) seems a little premature. Seems like it would have been worthwhile for the reporter to at least call some of the big electronics chains to see what's going on.

The Journal said that the Zune player was on Amazon's top 10 list after its Nov. 14 release, but yesterday had dropped to No. 76. iPods dominate the list, of course.

Analysts are expecting Zune sales at between 300,000 and 500,000 units for the holidays, according to the article.

The analyst firm PiperJaffray actually did some reporting on this issue and found that of clerks at 40 "big box" retailers, only 8 percent recommended buying the Zune and 75 percent recommended the iPod.